Online Backup Services Provider: How to Choose Your Offsite Backup Vendor of Choice

This article outlines the final criteria of a methodology to determine the online backup services provider for offsite backup.

In my earlier article, we discussed a two-stage methodology to help you determine the online backup services provider for your offsite backup needs.

In that article, Stage 1 of the methodology - compiling a short list - was covered in detail.

Today, we will talk about Stage 2 where you will assess those on the short-list against the final set of criteria to determine the top rated vendor.

I have listed the final criteria in the order of importance.

1. Around-The-Clock Phone Support

Remember that data recovery is not an activity that is done frequently.

Yet, when the need arises and especially when an entire server is down, the recovery has to be done correctly and quickly to minimise downtime.

This is best done by having the online backup services provider guiding you over the phone (or at the minimum using live chat) while the data restoration is being carried out.

Having a single number to call makes it easier for you to remember instead of calling separate numbers depending on the day or time.

2. Enhanced Restore Feature

The downtime can be reduced further if you can find an offsite backup services provider that provides enhanced recovery capabilities for restoration to be completed quicker.

3. Optimised Backup Feature

Scheduled backups happen regularly and if not optimised can drain your resources in terms of time and storage requirements.

You will therefore want to check whether there are additional capabilities that can reduce the amount of offsite data storage and backup time.

4. Service Provider Redundancy

Do make sure that your vendor has incorporated redundancy in its data centre premises. Redundancy should include servers, power, internet connection / bandwidth etc.

In addition to redundancy at the premise, you will find a few leading services providers even have mirrored data centres. And each of these mirrored data centres has its own set of redundant facilities. To be most secured, these mirrored data centres should be as far apart as possible.

5. Easy To Use Online Resources

This serves as a very useful source of reference to help you get things done quicker without the need of calling the vendor's support centre. Also, with easy-to-use online resources, you may even learn to carry out data restorations by yourself, expediting matters when you need most!

By evaluating the short-listed vendors against this final set of criteria, you will be able to determine the online backup services provider that can meet your business offsite backup needs.