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BizProtect - Business Continuity

Business Continuity thru BizProtect

The Gartner Group reports that 45% of Small/Medium (SMB) businesses without a Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plan go out of business after experiencing a catastrophic failure of IT operations.  Furthermore, the report details that the average SMB Company in the case of a recoverable failure of IT services lose $24,000 an hour in revenues.

When developing Business Continuity solutions for customers, the operative questions center on essentially how long can the organization can be without their server.  Can your users/clients wait 2-3 days?  What is the cost of downtime per hour?  Most businesses understand the value proposition of lost productivity as you surely do.  Business Continuity is an important strategy for every company!

BizProtect is the ITConsult solution to Business Continuity for the SMB market in Maine and includes 4 components:

 

  • BizAgent – the enabling agent for remote access and managed services

  • BizData - the online hosted secure backup service

  • BizSecure - to protect your core server IT processing resource and

  • BizShelter - for offsite physical office ready facilities in case your physical office space is compromised.

BizAgent

The ITConsult BizAgent is an effective, low cost, low overhead application that allows us to manage and monitor your server operations and the watch of network availability.  BizAgent eliminates the need for costly ‘managed’ services sometimes positioned as ‘insurance’ especially the so-called managed services for Firewall devices.  Thresholds are set with BizAgent which can trigger alerts that are captured in logs and also sent out via email to both ITConsult and customer personnel.

BizData

BizData uses the ITConsult eVaultIT online secure data protection service, a hosted remote online HIPAA compliant encrypted backup service.  This secure service allows us to backup the company’s key data files as well as the System State.  This data typically includes User Shares/Profiles, Exchange/Messaging mailboxes, and specific applications data such as that in MAS90/2xx, CCH proSystem, QuickBooks, etc.   This facility allows us to completely eliminate the need for tape drives/data cartridges, backup licensing and of course, the high administrative overhead of managing backups.

The data is stored in 2 offsite secure facilities.  Restoring data that is lost, spreadsheet overwritten for example is a simple user initiated process using a standard Windows Explorer type interface to restore files or folders accidentally deleted or otherwise lost.

BizSecure

BizSecure produces and manages images of the production server operating systems/applications and delivers them to an external USB hard drive/Raid appliance and optionally to an offsite secured location.  The objective is to provide the means by which we can quickly recover in case of a catastrophic Operating System failure or loss of use of the production server hardware.  The target recovery time is typically less than an hour unless of course new hardware needs to be procured.   Turning up a vmWare instance or restoring the server from a stored image facilitates that quick recovery process.

BizSecure+

BizSecure+ represents optional additional Business Continuity services which include Offsite USB Rotation, Scheduled Recovery and Guaranteed Server Hardware.   Offsite USB Rotation is a weekly process whereby ITConsult swaps out the external USB devices and stores them in a fireproof vault as part of the Business Continuity strategy.  The Scheduled Recovery service is a planned test to simulate a server loss scenario and intended to demonstrate how this solution provides Business Continuity for your company.  We feel a test at least once a year is warranted and of course is also dependent on any compliance or published Business Continuity strategy in force at your organization.  Guaranteed Server Hardware ensures that a current model replacement server will be onsite or at the designated disaster site within hours of a major server failure.

BizShelter

BizShelter is the next level of Business Continuity following BizData and BizSecure and addresses the element of Disaster Recovery.  BizShelter offers offsite business ready facility from which normal business trade can be conducted, usually within minutes of the need for temporary office space.  Through our affiliation with the BC Group of Westbrook, Maine we help businesses plan for business redirection and provides the facilities and accommodations to make redirection possible with minimal impact.  Facility ready, BizShelter includes voice services, data, office space, desks, printing, and security – a complete offsite office.