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Skadoit, The Ultimate Home-Based Franchise

Written by: Ken Hollowell

Article Overview: Skadoit was developed by Profran Consultant this year with the guidance of Ken Hollowell. Skadoit has been said to be a model for future franchisors. Skadoit uses the success and acceptance of franchising combined with the explosive impact of affiliate marketing to create what is being called an amazing franchise. Skadoit provides online remote backup services for computer users. The facts about this industry is truly amazing.

Skadoit, The Ultimate Home-Based Franchise

Skadoit is a private company specializing in both individual computer users and business users with multiple computers that require more than once a day backing up of critical data. Recent surveys indicate that few people use daily backup services despite 46% of computers users every year lose photos, music and data from viruses, theft, hard drive crashes, human error and a slew of similar causes. Estimates are that 94% of computer users DO NOT do regular backups daily.

Skadoit's remote backup service is the culmination of a years of intense research and software development. It responds to a growing awareness among many business leaders of business continuity concerns, which have spearheaded outsourcing trends, growing data volumes, and increasing data vulnerabilities generated in today's economy. Skadoit is an innovative and cost-effective data backup and data storage solution as a superior alternative to do-it-yourself methods.

Skadoit is an affordable, feature-rich, online data backup and fast data recovery service that is easy to install, administer, and use. The service is delivered over a communications link using the TCP/IP protocol and is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Skadoit is suitable for small, mid-size, and enterprise-wide, multiple-platform LAN computing environments that want to safeguard their critical business data in a secure, off-site location.

Facts About Data Lose

Over 100 people lose data every minute, Good news: 98 percent of PC users have antivirus protection on their primary computers, and 95 percent have firewall security. That means we're safe, right? Wrong.

Security against online threats are crucial, yet it leaves a gaping hole in our protetive shields. What about all of the files stored on your computer? For most of us, our worlds are on our PC's, and we assume it's all safe simply because we clicked "save."

• Nearly 90 percent of Internet users would be "greatly inconvenienced" if they lost files on their computers - but only 6 percent protect them with daily backup.
• Conservative estimates show that every day, 130,000 people in the United States lose files stored on their PC's. You can only imagine what that number is worldwide but could be in access of 2 million people.
• Two out of five PC users (43 percent) have lost files or data at some point in their lives.
• One in five have lost files in the last two years alone.
• Lost photos are the number-one concern, followed by financial information, text documents and work projects.

What Do You Store on Your PC?

Photographs - 92.9%

Text Documents - 88.1%

E-mails - 84.1%

Contacts - 77.7%

Work projects or documents - 71.0%

Music - 69.3%

Financial Information - 52.7%

Personal or work calendar - 42.3%

Home videos - 34.8%

Are Your Files Safe?

Although 67 percent of people say they worry about losing irreplacable files stored on their PCs, the overwhelming majority are not taking the appropriate steps to prevent loss.

As one survey respondent said, "I'm aware that I need to back up info, but still don't do anything about it."

How Often Do You Back Up?

Never - 20.2%

Less than once a year - 11.7%

About once a year - 14.0%

Every three months - 17.1%

Monthly - 16.1%

Weekly - 11.6%

Once a day - 5.2%

Several times a day - 1.0%

Don't know - 3.2%

• Twenty percent of PC users have never backed up the data on their personal computers.
• Just 6 percent back up daily.
• Nearly half (46 percent) back up once a year or less - leaving 364 days of data susceptible to loss or damage.

Unfortunately, most people don't realize how important backup is until it's too late. And while an infected computer can be replaced, lost photos, records and documents are often unrecoverable.

Everyday Risks

Every day across the world, hard drives fail, laptops are stolen, software malfunctions, busy people spill coffee and kids push the wrong button.

The leading cause of data loss is hardware failure, followed by human error and software corruption. Together, these three risk factors comprise more than 80% of all incidents.

Hardware failure - 40%

Human error - 29%

Software Corruption - 13%

Theft - 9%

Viruses - 6%

Natural Disaster - 3%

Real People, Real Quotes

"All my data was gone; I paid a fortune to try and retrieve it, to no avail."

"I lost six months of pictures of our kids."

"I had to reload more than 2,000 songs."

"It sets you back to ground zero when you lose your information. I use my laptop for work, so the things I lost were very important. The down time involved when getting my laptop fixed also crippled me when trying to work."

While data loss is devasting for individuals, the effects can be disastrous for small business owners; one study found that 60 percent of companies that lose their data and can not retrieve them will shut down within six months.

Reasons for Not Backing Up

Forget - 52.4%

Doesn't happen automatically - 35.6%

Takes too long - 27.2%

Requires hardware - 17.4%

Don't know how - 13.2%

Too complicated - 8.7%

Don't think it's important or necessary - 6.1%

Too expensive - 3.0%

None of the above - 16.7%|

Other - 1.9%

There's a Better Way

So what's the answer? Online backup addresses all five of the top barriers that prevent people from regularly backing up:

It automatically protects files so you don't forget.

Backups can be scheduled to occur whenever you want.

It saves time because you set it and forget it.

Set-up is easy, even for novice computer users, and can be completed in minutes.

No hardware is required, but larger files can still be backed up locally.

The only requirements for online backup are an Internet connection and a program installation. Skadot uses software that encrypts your files and uses highly secure transmission to eliminate privacy and security concerns.

Related Articles
  Homebased Business Opportunities
  Own Your Own Franchise and never get Fired Again
  Franchising with all its Success
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  About 60% of all franchise opportunities have less than 50 units.

Article Tags: franchise consultant, ken hollowell, our business, profran consultants



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