Small businesses using technology to bolster preparedness for an emergency

One might assume that small businesses are more cautious with their investments than their larger counterparts. While this may have a certain degree of truth to it, larger enterprises often have more established operational methods and require more senior management officials to sign off on technological transitions.

By contrast, small business officials oftentimes are willing to take more risks and utilize innovative tech practices to drive business model innovation.

As such, it is interesting to note that a recent IT security study found that significant volumes of small companies are utilizing mobile, virtualization and cloud technologies.

After surveying more than 2,000 small organizations that had between five and 250 employees, the research team found that more than a third had encouraged staff members to conduct their daily responsibilities via mobile devices. Moreover, 34 percent of the respondents had switched to virtualized servers while roughly 40 percent were storing data in public or private clouds.

Interestingly, the primary reason provided for the adoption of these platforms was disaster recovery.

In fact, 37 percent of the respondents reported that disaster preparedness was a key factor in their switch to the cloud while 75 percent mentioned that their disaster recovery initiatives had improved because of server virtualization.

"Technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing and mobility, combined with a sound plan and comprehensive security and data protection solutions, enable SMBs to better prepare for and quickly recover from potential disasters such as floods or fires, as well as lost or stolen mobile devices and laptops," said Steve Cullen of the researching organization.

Considering such, business officials in Ohio that want to tighten their disaster recovery standards would be wise to partner with a Cincinatti IT consulting firm that can provide a small business network analysis to determine which of these technologies would best suit an individual business model.

From our offices in Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland, PRO OnCall is your single-source technology consulting service, offering managed IT support, unified communications solutions and on-call IT support.