The Catch-22 Of Technological Dependency

Addressing Executive Management’s Fear of Downed Networks

For the past two decades, advancing technology has unquestionably enhanced the way we conduct day-to- day business. A stable, reliable and secure IT system means efficient operations and optimized productivity, service, and communications. It fosters greater opportunity and increased revenue potential. Today, through technology, small-to-medium sized businesses anywhere can serve customers globally twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, which was unfathomable 5-10 years ago. In today’s business world, anyone can be as big as they want to be.

This greater dependency on technology also presents a paradox in the sense that the consequences of network failure can often be fatal to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

While system outages and failures can result in service hiccups and lost profits for large companies like Blackberry, Intuit, or Virgin Blue, these companies typically have enough resources to bounce back and continue on with business as usual once the underlying issue is resolved. Smaller and midsize companies don’t have this same luxury.

For example, if a law firm pays $20,000 to recover from an email virus that corrupts their client data, or an online nutritional supplement company shells out $40,000 for data recovery and repairs after hard drive failure takes them offline for ten days, these companies are dealt a significant fiscal blow that they may never recover from. The National Archives & Records Administration in Washington found that 93% of SMBs file for bankruptcy within twelve months of experiencing data loss and prolonged downtime of ten or more days.

The National Archives & Records Administration in Washington found that 93% of SMBs file for bankruptcy within twelve months of experiencing data loss and prolonged downtime of ten or more days.