Online Backup Will Keep Your Data Safe

Why is online backup storage important? It is very important to use some kind of backup storage to prevent corruption or loss of data. As compared to storing information on hard drives, CDs or DVDs, this is the best option as it is not prone to easy damage. It allows a user to save the important information or data. Online backup storage can be used by people who wish to save video files, music and videos, exchange information with family and make copies of vital information.

But before digging deeper and go through details, we need to know in brief what is backup and why back up data? 

Simply backup means that you have a copy of data stored somewhere else meaning 2 copies. If one copy fails then the second copy could be used which is unlikely to fail at the same time as the first copy unless of course a natural disaster happens.

Data backup is easily a important aspect of computer security. Another thing to note is natural disasters. This may be unlikely but it does happen. When you backup data try and keep it at 2 places rather than one but at the same time keep it secure from any unauthorized people.

There are a lot of ways in which you could back up your data and it is not a really difficult process as people may think.

Also depending on the amount of data you have it is wise to take into account future data and make a decision on what size you need for a back up copy of existing data

From my perspective I would say that you must backup your data! I wish that weren't so but it is - just too many ways to lose it.  Online backup of files, pictures, and emails is becoming the most popular way to get that done nowadays. With the affordability of backing up your data online, many find it the perfect solution to automate this part of your life.

What software can be used to back up data? 

Today there are many software that are available to back up data. Using software to back up your data has a lot of advantages rather than copy and pasting them manually onto a removable media. Here are major advantages of this: 

Automated Backups – This means that you don't really have to do anything rather than set the time and date you want the backups to take place and what drives or files you want backed up. 

Online Storage – A copy of your data has been saved online and away from the computer and other hassles such as back up media. In the case of a natural disaster you are safe. 

Data Recovery Made Easy – In the case of data loss you do not have to go through lots of data on the media you can access them online. Files online are also encrypted for your privacy. 

There are a lot of versions and advance features of software available for backup purposes. You must also note that if this is for just home use there is no point in paying that much money for any small or medium business size packages. 

Many anti virus software are now adding online back up features such as Bull Guard so that may be a option to look at if you are planning to buy a anti virus software

Advantages of online backup storage

It is very important that you have the best online backup, as it will enable you to keep the information safe, which can be easily accessed. In case of a disaster, all the information can then be retrieved from the Internet.

Having a backup storage is of utmost importance as it keeps the business equipped with all the necessary information. Online backup storage plan requires you to copy all the spreadsheets, documents, e-mail and files onto the site that offers the plan.

Copying information on DVD or CD is a feasible option for a small organization. However, the method is practically not feasible in case of large organizations as the data is too much to be stored in a DVD or CD. The best online backup storage server contains of file servers and nothing else. The service provider allows a user to be connected with the file server with the help of the Internet connection.

All the information is coded so that it cannot be stolen or read by anybody else. Also, the information can be uploaded from a person's computer system. The backup storage servers enables that even in case of a disaster, the information is retrieved.

The way online backup of your data works is this:

There are a number of products and vendors that promise you online data storage and backup, for instance - IDrive (www.idrive.com) OR Google Drive (http://www.google.com/drive/about.html) OR OneDrive (https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/) OR  Spideroak (http://spideroak.com) OR Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) AND Mozy (http://mozy.com/home/free)

For me I have already picked the provider that meet my needs and I recommend Mozy for its ease, simplicity, and price. If you’re looking for unlimited data storage, keep looking. 

Mozy’s free tier, which caps out at 2GB, is hardly worth having – you can get much more for free from Amazon, Google Drive, or countless other cloud services. The difference is, Mozy is fully automatic where those aren’t.

Mozy pay plans start at $5.99 per month for 50 GB (one computer only) and $9.99 per month for 125 GB (up to three computers). The free mobile app is easy to use, but some of the biggest complaints about it range from the user’s inability to list cloud data by file type and difficulty downloading once you do find what you’re looking for. Mozy may be one of the most recognizable names in the automatic cloud service arena, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s the best or the most cost effective

You should download the "client" software and let the system start to make a remote copy of your data.

Once it is finished doing the initial upload, double-check the client for the files you have available to restore.

If any of the files you need to backup aren't there, just send those specific files to the company to save for you. (most companies default to only save files under 2 GB for example, unless you tell it to otherwise)

It is an easy and simple way to store information. So, for people who wish to have secure and safe data, an online backup storage is vital.

For start up I recommend the free online backup services as it will save your files off-site to the cloud. If your hard drive crashes your files are not lost. Your first line of defense should be an external hard drive to back up your hard drive or a jump drive for your documents.  

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Build a Good Business Reputation Through Go Green Strategy

A growing small and big business needs a reputation, it is like a plant needs water. Evolution in technology and understanding has facilitated the transformation for more cost-effective for businesses to “go green.” Yes, going green does protect the environment, but it can be good for your company as well. You’ll gain customers, which customers? The customers who support and appreciate companies that respect the environment

From adding recycling bins to your office, to reducing your carbon footprint, there are many simple ways you and your business can reduce their environmental impact and can actually help your company’s reputation. In my previous articles I have mentioned that taking steps to green your business will not only help the environment or getting high reputation; in many cases it reduces your costs over time while attracting customers and employees who support environmentally friendly businesses.

Nowadays, business and academic interest toward green product development is rapidly growing. Green product development is receiving increasing attention as means to improve companies’ performance (Chung and Tsai, 2007). In fact, it may be a significant source of competitive advantage when it allows for either product differentiation (Orsato, 2006) or low cost manufacturing.

It cannot be done without clear vision and studied plan, organizations’ leaders are responsible to deliver plans and results to meet the enterprise’s sustainability goals. Therefore, going green will help your company to gain respect in your community. Simply put, it shows you and your organization are care. Individuals and businesses want to do business with companies that aren’t just in it for themselves. By going green, you’re showing others that you’re interested in the world and the planet we live on.

I would say, creating green processes to the workplace make a healthy environment for employees. Also, it reduces the majority of the unnecessary waste. On the other hand, getting employee input can be one of the most effective ways of finding innovative solutions to reducing costs and becoming more eco-friendly. 

As I am interesting in IT industry and digital field, I will input my example about go-green from IT aspect. Green computing strategies challenge the common misperceptions that green computing will cost more; however, these strategies actually improve an organization's bottom line rather than shrink it when adopted. By integrating green computing strategies, organizations have a clear path to create savings that will improve IT, free up capital for other investments, generate goodwill with their constituency groups-all the while exemplifying good stewardship of the economy and environment. 

Now is the time to make a positive impact on your community, on the environment and on your profit margins by implementing go green strategy, less wasteful green solutions in your business, these strategies should be viewed as part of a broader initiative to reduce the cost of doing business.  I would therefore say, green IT takes advantage of cutting-edge solutions that keep you connected and improve reliability, while reducing energy consumption.
 

For instance, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is also something to be skeptical of when it comes to green IT. So moving 50 desktops from 250-watt computers to a single 2,000-watt computer might seem like a 10,000-watt energy savings, unless of course you’re going to keep those desktop computers to use as VDI endpoints. If you are, then you’re actually adding another 10,000 watts of energy consumption and working toward the opposite of green IT.

In American University of Sharjah (AUS) we have adopted Citrix (A new approach to desktop deployment) in all AUS colleges and schools which is also VDI technology to improve business continuity and data security, reduce university power consumption; the result then AUS can be greener. 

In AUS IT data-center, we have created new virtual machines. The plan is to select machines that provide the most computing power for the least amount of energy consumption. The strategy is to ensure that every watt is being used to full advantage by moving older, lower-efficiency servers into virtual machines running on newer, higher-efficiency ones.

Going green is important for the future of the economy and our civilization. Companies going green can provide necessary leadership in the green movement, work wonders for the environment, significantly improve their bottom lines and show they are excellent corporate citizens

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How Green IT Changed How We Think About Organization Sustainability

Over the last few years, the term of “Green IT” has begun to be used to describe a form that pour into two trends. The first trend involves the growing concern about environmental issues across our life in communities. The second trend involves Information Technology the use of digital tools and techniques for manipulating information, and the social phenomena that surround these systems.

As we know the Information Technology industry (hardware, software and services) has provided many tools to help generate and process data, communicate globally, and improve productivity.

With data consumption rising more than 10% every year and with most companies still hitched to dirty energy sources, we see there many companies found a full-fledged green transition in the IT sector is urgently needed and becoming sustainable!

Information in general, and IS and IT systems in particular can play an important control role through support of environmental management systems, life cycle analysis, and design for the environment practices. What do you think?

From my perspective, information technology is positioned to play a key role in facilitating the shift toward sustainability - oriented business. As the use of IT in business grows and both public and private demand for environmental and social responsibility increases, the need for effective sustainability - oriented IT systems will similarly expand.

In the same time and before applying sustainable technique or sustainable technologies, do you know what are the steps should followed to adopt this strategy? Do we understand what it takes to finance the energy improvements we require? Do companies have good information regarding the results of their sustainability initiatives? Can they report with confidence measures of tangible and intangible benefits? Do companies work to propel business applications while ensuring the server maintains a small carbon footprint? Do buildings with more natural light really improve productivity and morale?

For instance, laptops and mobile devices – information technology (IT) is not only a booming economic sector but also an energy-intensive one. There is a research says it accounts for 2% of human greenhouse gas emissions worldwide! Did you hear about that?

I would therefore say Green IT is the latest buzzword being promoted and become one of the best strategy that delivering incremental benefits to the organization by improving end-user working practices, creating energy efficient office environments and reducing data center energy consumption.

For Instance, the City of Calgary really does have to think about going “Green” and introduce new innovative technologies. Calgary this year has different projects in Green Technologies such as, Waste-heat capture program and Imagine Calgary

Going green is not only relate with the reduce the amount of paper we use or carbon footprint , it is the way to think of using information technology tools — from sensors to databases and websites to integrate sustainability factors into business operations.

Another Example I have in American University of Sharjah, in June 2011 AUS has lunched higher standard for academic buildings to sustain the campus environment. The building incorporates the most advanced technological facilities of academic infrastructure in the UAE and region. 

From IT aspect many of the clever ideas connected with Green IT and sustainability involve the joint use of purely virtual space, most servers used today utilize between 5 and 15% of their total capacity while consuming 60 to 90% of their maximum energy consumption at idle. To overcome all these energy consumptions AUS has adopted a visualization (VMs) which allows the number of physical servers to be drastically reduced for large power savings and has contributed to add more space (Increase Data Center Capacity) in the data center once visualization is implemented due to the decreasing amount of physical hardware needed. 

Clearly underlining that several organizations take Green IT seriously can boost that organization’s image and brand. Today, image and brand are significant aspects of competing for sales of products and services and for attracting and holding onto staff.

So it the time to integrating your Green IT strategy into business objectives.

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Green Policy - Do We Need to Apply It as Green Deal On Organization?

Nowadays, most people have a clear vision about the concept of Green Organization and what is the reason for organizations to go green in terms of impress employees, business world and enhance corporate reputation. So green strategy is now a trend in the market place, it’s also a term that's been going around for quite some time in different parts of the world. But what's the real deal with "Going Green"? And why should businesses care?
From my perspective, going green for organization pours in one stream which is increase employee engagement, create value might find additional competitive advantage and maintain company’s sustainable revenue. 

I would therefore, summarize why business should care Go Green about and what is the impact on:-

• Go Green for the Environment
• Go Green to Reduce Waste & Decrease Costs
• Go Green for Public Image & Increased Sales
• Go Green for your Employees

 

So for the question, do we need to apply Green Policy in organization? I would say, all companies should have green policy - and all areas of human activity for that matter. Gone are the days when humanity can afford to base decisions solely on cost-benefit in the traditional sense of the term. We are already using more than 100% of the earth's resources available to us each year and if everyone on earth enjoyed the average Western European standard of living, by 2050. 

All companies and all governments need to start considering the cost-benefit of activities on people, planet and profit rather than profit alone. A cost/benefit analysis may not reveal the true cost of the environmental impact and depending on how it is done may not reveal all the environmental costs associated with the project. For example if we did a cost benefit analysis of a vehicle would we go as far as to include the environmental pollution costs? Think about it. Whereas, if you want to see it from second point of view,  green policy will:-

• Reduce costs by consuming less. When you do more with less you reduce overhead costs and improve the bottom line. 
• Reduce costs by reusing materials and goods. When you use things more than once you reduce the amount of new materials you have to buy, which saves money and improves your bottom line.  
• Reduce costs by recycling. Disposing of “waste” is expensive. As we run out of landfill space, the cost of disposal is likely to increase. Recycling materials reduces disposal costs and keeps it out of the landfill.

I would add, in order to have a successful company you must have a good, solid reputation. Reputations come in all forms – they come via the quality of your product, your people skills, customer satisfaction levels, etc. Going green is a considered a great step to improve your company’s reputation – just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons, not just to boost sales.

Going green may also enable companies to keep customers and investors happy, maintain market share, become more efficient, avoid legal liability for environmental damage and stay in business. So if you have a small company or business I would strongly say you should go green in order to stay competitive in the market and gain the opportunity to compete.

Establish and implement green policies such as hardware energy consumption, waste disposal, using recycled and environmentally superior content, water and energy efficient products and alternative fuel vehicles can very significantly impact your organization performance in positive direction and will know that your business invest going forward

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