No matter how big and successful your company is, downtime can be a significant problem. Clients get angry, employees get frustrated, and growth can stagnate because you spend too much time dealing with the consequences of an outage. According to Uptime Institute, 80% of data center managers and operators have faced some outage in the past three years.
For startups, in particular, this is especially true because downtime often means lost revenue and wasted opportunities for growth. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to minimize downtime for your company and turn it into an advantage instead of a disadvantage. Here are some tips on how to reduce business downtime.
Data Backup and Recovery
According to Backblaze 2022 Backup Survey, 54% of respondents lost their data. When it comes to business continuity, data backup and recovery are critical parts of the equation. It’s essential to have a plan for what will happen in an emergency or disaster.
That means having multiple copies of your data stored in different locations so you don’t lose any critical information. Your backup plan should also be tested regularly so that you know everything will work as expected when an actual emergency occurs. Your backups should be stored on different media types to avoid a total loss.
Leverage the Cloud
According to Statista, more than 60% of corporate data is on the cloud. Cloud computing can access data and software from anywhere, on any device. You can access the cloud from any computer or mobile device, so it’s easy for anyone with internet access to get in. It’s also more secure than using a server you own and control because your data is stored on servers owned by companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS).
If you’re worried about downtime due to a hardware failure, the cloud ensures that users won’t be affected as long as an internet connection is available. The user can continue using their service uninterrupted until it returns to normal operations. It means less risk for your business.
A Good Business Internet Connection
A reliable business internet connection is imperative to keep most businesses up and running. A good way of doing this is to purchase backup internet connections through satellite or cellular towers. Consider a mobile hotspot, which can provide wireless connectivity when you don’t have access to Wi-Fi.
You should also ensure that your internet connection is fast enough for all the tasks you’ll be performing at work. Not just because it’s frustrating when pages take an age to load but because slow speeds can negatively impact productivity levels and employee morale. You should consider upgrading if necessary or switching providers if the speed of your current connection needs to be better for what you need out of it.
You’ll also want to ensure that whoever provides your service has state-of-the-art security features so that hackers can’t get in and steal any sensitive data from within their servers. Or worse yet, use malware on one of those servers as a launchpad for an attack against other businesses with similar systems installed.
Use Redundant Resources Effectively
Redundant resources are a great way to prevent downtimes. While it may seem strange, redundancycan be used for many purposes like disaster recovery, business continuity, and offloading workloads from primary resources.
When you have redundant resources, one of two things happens when your primary resource goes down. Either your application will automatically failover to the secondary resource, or an administrator will manually initiate a failover process.
If you’re using redundant resources correctly, those failures only happen sometimes. But suppose they do occur often enough to affect your customers’ ability to use your product or service effectively. In that case, it may not make sense to continue using those redundant strategies anymore.
Invest in Real-Time Monitoring and Issue Detection
Nowadays, real-time monitoring and issue detection are essential for businesses. The first thing that you need to do is set up a real-time alerting system. It will help you detect issues faster and respond to them more effectively.
Real-time monitoring also helps get more accurate data about your servers, applications, or services on top of those servers or virtual machines. It can give you an idea about the performance of these services so that you can identify potential problems before they cause downtime for your business.
Create an IT Playbook for Minimizing Downtime
If you need more time to prepare for downtime, consider creating an IT playbook to ensure your business is ready for the worst. Your playbook should include incident management, outage management, disaster recovery, and data backup and recovery processes.
In addition to a process-based approach, you should also have an established team of IT professionals who can handle each situation effectively. It includes having a team member that oversees all aspects of IT operations.
Reduce Business Downtime to Have More Time to Grow Your Company
It is the most apparent reason you should be concerned about reducing business downtime. When your business goes down, productivity takes a hit, and things get delayed. It might not seem like a big deal if it happens only once or twice but imagine what happens if this keeps happening over time.
In summary, this article has given you some ideas on reducing business downtime for your startup. It’s not always easy, but you can do it. Keep in mind that every startup is different and so will have its own unique set of challenges and opportunities. If you follow these tips closely and apply them to your situation, they can help make a difference in your life.
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