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Data, One of Your Most Important Assets

Written by: Kevin M. O’Keefe

Article Overview: Small businesses have to realize the importance of their data...How it's stored, how it's shared, how it's secured, and how it's backed up. You don't have to spend a lot of money to implement a simple file storage solution, and the money that you do spend will be well worth the small investment to improve efficiency, and make you sleep better at night knowing it will be there when you need to access it tomorrow.

Data, One of Your Most Important Assets

It’s amazing to think that most people don’t think twice about routine maintenance, such as an oil change, for their car...It gets you from point “A” to point “B” and is therefore an important asset. Unfortunately “data” is an often overlooked asset being intangible. This being the case, it’s not unusual as a consultant to walk in to a perspective small business client and encounter a network with no central file server. A file server’s sole purpose is to share files (data) among multiple PCs. Instead I’m never surprised to find what’s termed a “Peer-to-Peer” network where data is stored among multiple systems (PCs) in a “workgroup” environment. The major downside to this strategy would be not having one central location to share your data in an organized, and structured manner. As you can see, this would also make it unnecessarily difficult to secure, and back up the data as well. Every small business employing 3 or more users should have a central file server. This can be as simple and inexpensive as a PC costing $800, which can be “dedicated” to sharing your data. If you think it’s important to have a garage for your car and a bank for your money, you should start to think about the importance of how you store, share, protect, & back up one of the most important components of your business…your data.

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