The importance of understanding proper cloud adoption

There is a distinct difference between using the cloud to improve collaboration among employees and having it set as a core platform for disaster recovery. One of the problems is that terms like "storage," "access" and "recovery" can easily be confused by companies that are not tech savvy.

A recent report from MarketsandMartkets examined how small businesses are using the cloud as a disaster recovery plan. The numbers show that currently, the marketplace sits at $640.8 million and by 2018, that number will increase to $5.77 billion. One of the driving factors is the growing demand from smaller companies.

"Many of the difficulties around having a comprehensive disaster recovery plan center around its cost and complexity," the article reads. "Usually large enterprises have the funds to not only pay for the solution needed to prevent a disaster from running their business, but also to pay for the expertise to implement, test, and maintain the DR infrastructure. These are luxuries most SMBs don't have."

This is important because 24 percent of small companies have experienced a full data disaster and 95 percent of companies have experienced some kind of data outage during the past year. On top of that, 50 percent of companies that have some form of disaster recovery plan in place do not have the means to test it.

Here is where the help of an IT consulting firm that specializes in cloud backup and recovery solutions becomes important. It helps businesses take steps toward implementing these systems and ensuring they are managed properly.