Protecting Against the “Oops” Moment
What if an administrative error resulted in the loss of critical information in your enterprise content management (ECM) repository— and you were unable to recover the content and metadata required for compliance or processes to run the business?
Exactly how likely is this nightmare to occur? 
We live in a digitally-dependent world, and as rock-solid as we like to believe our technology to be, we also know that no system is perfect. Data can be unpredictable, and one “Oops” moment nobody foresaw can inflict disproportionately serious pain, for example:
- A damaged engineering document can stop an entire power plant.
- A major bank can lose hundreds of loan applications due to an administrative error.
- A missing bit of life sciences data can halt an FDA submission and halt production of a new wonder drug.
But we’re talking more than dollars here. This is about keeping the lights on, keeping businesses operational, and even saving lives.
The “Oops” moment can take many forms:
- A virus corrupts metadata associated with critical regulatory documents, making them inaccessible.
- A user overwrites an insurance claim with the wrong file.
- A contractor accidentally purges important data from the production instead of the development system.
Don’t think this could happen to you? Think again.
“Oops” moments happen more often than most people imagine – in fact, according to AIIM International, they account for over 80% of ECM system information loss. This is why investment in backup and recovery solutions is so critical.
However, if backup and recovery solutions necessitate a system shutdown, organizations are STILL at risk of losing unacceptable time, money, and more. Forward-looking organizations are increasingly seeking solutions to handle their backup and recovery while the repository application continues to run.
Do you have “Oops” protection?
I meet with many CEOs and IT managers who frankly don’t know what they don’t have. They feel secure with their existing infrastructure backups (perhaps a different one in each department) and no overall backup strategy that addresses the needs of Enterprise Content management systems. Many companies haven’t properly tested their backup and recovery plans for a broad range of failures: the big ones, and the often-overlooked “Oops” moments too.
Every company, no matter its size, can benefit from a sober cost-benefit analysis of everything that can go wrong, the potential perils of even the smallest glitch, and the time and money it’s going to cost to make things right again.
More and more forward-thinking companies are coming to the same conclusion: they need an integrated hot backup and granular recovery solution that covers all scenarios, keeps the wheels turning, and fixes… REALLY fixes what’s broken, in minutes instead of days.
This may be the only way to banish the nightmares.
Mike Fernandes, VP, Products, enChoice
Mike has over 20 years’ experience in the technology industry encompassing the management of IT departments, online banking hosting centers, and B2B support organizations.