Pool parties are the best not to mention all margaritas and martinis that come with them. A month ago, I was down at the swimming pool on a sunny Sunday and happened to meet a neighbor who is a paralegal. So here I am boozing and socializing with a paralegal and talking to her about her office and my work. Unfortunately she just happened to have a tough week at work, as the building in which her office is located had a fire. The office above her office was caught on fire and it all started with a cigarette butt. Fire went on and did some direct damage to one of the offices. But most of the damage was not from fire it was from something else.

You got it! Most of the damage was from sprinklers and water thrown in by the fire truck. Some offices in the building got flooded and everything from computers to files felt the brunt of H2O. Fire, flood, computers, files….sounds like some uninvited extra work, doesn’t it? Time to buy new office furniture, files and computers, flood control …shopping time! Wait a sec, where can they buy data that was on their old computers and servers? My friend was relieved to know that even though her computers were damaged due to water her data was still secure, as they had a backup server on a different floor in the same building. A NARROW escape! I just wonder how many businesses out there have a backup server in their basement or on another floor in the same building and don’t realize there are data centers (with fire supression technology ) in this world for a reason. Do they know that:

“70 percent of small firms that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year “.*

Even more than that I wonder how adamant are they about their basement backup server when they say “I have backup, it works well, I have it all taken care off and I don’t need offsite backup” I guess will let them live in their ignorant world, after all what do I know I am just a rabbit!

*Source: Contingency Planning, Strategic Research Corp and DTI/Price Waterhouse Coopers (2004) and is widely quoted in places such as: DianaShepstone, National data awareness project launched to help businesses prevent data disasters ( Data Centre Solutions, Jan. 8, 2007)  see: http://www.datacentresols.com/news/articles-full.php?newsid=5455