And interestingly the Onyx Group has a whole new approach in its offer of 'resilience' for SME's. Now for as little as £99/month, the data centre group that offers blue chip groups a portfolio range of IT services, from Cloud computing to data and network security or Consona customer relationship management, now offers a small business continuity plan.

There can be no doubt that the Onyx acquisition of the London based Disaster Recover Solutions in October last year, giving them over 100 work place recovery sites countrywide, has been the physical asset allowing the Group to consider widening its market from medium to larger companies down to a smaller clientele.

Companies are continously urged to take a more proactive prevention attitude to disaster recovery  and questioned as to their back up and recovery status. Now Onyx is providing an office work desk, access to files, communications and a business meeting place back up on a 5-desk, 15-desk and 25-desk basis, with prices ranging from £99, £299, and £399 a month respectively.

On the Onyx web scenarios & testimonials  can be found the impact of the Buncefield explosion; flooding in Cumbria and when the heaviest snow in decades hit Edinburgh, an Onyx client, unable to get to his remote home office, made it instead to his more accessible Onyx back up centre.

When Glasgow-based client OneSearch Direct was hit by a natural disaster which destroyed work premises and the on-site data server, it invoked its direct workplace recovery (DR) plan with Onyx  by 7.30am on disaster day. By 11.30am it had relocated staff to a recovery centre with full access to workstation pc’s, internet, phones and company data. Productivity fully resumed 8.30am the following day, with dispatch of some of their deadline product by close of play that day.

"Smaller companies are more vulnerable than large ones from lack of continuity," says Gillen. "It can more often force them out of business. We're not talking the extremes even of storm damage, flooding or terrorism, but the more the practical issues of the damage that a few days without any internet communications or power cuts could do, or the impact of loosing critical data say through laptop theft."

Driving issues for secure data
There are several factors driving SME prospective take-up of the new service, Gillen says. One is the increasing need for certain business sectors to be 'legally compliant to authorities,' which automatically means never loosing your data. This applies to financial, legal, local authorities, the health service and other public bodies.

Another factor that Gillen feels will continue to be taken much more seriously in its requirement for data disaster provision, is the Civil Contingency Act of 2004, where resilience is essential.

And he notes also the growing need for many, even for the smallest companies, to be able to work from anywhere across the globe at remote centres, and yet still ensure data back up with the assurance of recovery.


Cell phone peace of mind
One IT device that easily gets overlooked in the continuity scheme is the mobile phone Cell phone, whose vital data is probably the most overlooked and also fragile. it contains the most critical and close contacts and information on an hour by hour basis and provision for its safety is probably the most overlooked in the SME business.

"Yes, we do offer data back-up for mobile phone contracts. Secure backup and recovery for these can be equally important as server backup and recovery,” says Gillen thoughtfully.