Information is the lifeblood of every Small and Medium-sized Business. It is no surprise, then, that improving data availability, recovery, and storage utilisation are among the top concerns of most SMBs. However, SMBs are often challenged with limited resources and time to handle the rapidly increasing amounts of data being created. This often leads to increased data security risks, more downtime, and less regulatory compliance. Luckily, the advent of ‘Software as a Service’ is opening SMBs up to a whole new level of IT services that are affordable and easy to manage.

Constant inflow of data

While growth of a business is a positive sign of success, it also means there is more to protect...and more to lose. According to the IDC Worldwide Data Protection and Recovery Software 2007-2011 Forecast, “external disk storage capacity, which will increase on average by 50% annually, will require a corresponding data protection capacity”. Data growth means SMBs must seek out ways to improve their IT infrastructure and recovery processes, or they run the following risks:

• Inability to retrieve data in the event of a disaster
• Non-compliance by not retaining data that is secured for a specified amount of time
• Exposure to business outages
• Exposure to hardware failure

Choosing SaaS

Software as a service (SaaS) offerings have emerged as a way for SMBs to enjoy vital IT services in an on-demand fashion. SaaS offerings are hosted by the vendor, and leverage the Web to deliver a service that is priced on a subscription basis. With SaaS, there is not up front investment, and SMBs enjoy improved reliability and lower staff support requirements. Widely known SaaS offerings include ADP for payroll services and Salesforce.com for customer relationship management solutions. New SaaS solutions are extending to the IT infrastructure, going beyond applications to offer complete IT infrastructure protection that includes not only storage, but backup and recovery services.

Handling data is challenging and fraught with risk, and concerns about service reliability, data security, and recovery constantly loom in the minds of IT managers. Symantec recognises that SMBs often require enterprise-class technology but don’t have the resources or capital to address enterprise complexity. That is why Symantec has developed SaaS offerings for data backup, recovery, and storage that are managed, maintained, and upgraded by Symantec. The offerings include, Symantec Protection Network, Symantec Online Backup and Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec.

Relying on IT to run business

SMBs increasingly rely on information and technology to run their business. Businesses that do not protect their IT infrastructure put themselves at risk by being unable to retrieve data in the event of system downtime or major catastrophic incident, failing to comply with industry and government regulations, and jeopardising productivity. Software as a Service is coming to the rescue for many SMBs, offering enterprise-level capability at a consistent, affordable price.

The author is Director Channel and Alliances, Symantec India