If you don’t backup your files, you are either dumb or lazy.  That is right, you are:

a) dumb.  You are a moron.  Big words make you blink blankly; they boggle your brain.

b) lazy.  You know you should back up all those files, but, maybe you will get around to it.  After this next episode of LOST (which is what your files will be if you never back them up).

c) An optimist.  see a)

d) an employee – and you assume your work takes care of this for you.  See b)

So, yeah, I am sure there are other explanations.  However, there isn’t really an excuse.  When I was a consultant, and somebody’s laptop picked a pope, most of these panicked people asked me right away about their pictures, then music.  Oh, yeah, then the work files.   Imagine losing all of your digital pictures.  Your wife (or husband) would be so mad!  It is just like your house burning down, except without the maimed cat and your wife isn’t hitting on any firemen.  So, yes, ok, you are right, it is slightly better than your house burning down, but you still lost all your stuff.

I agree that most employers should make this an automatic thing, individual employees shouldn’t have to waste their time backing up files.  It should just be done.  For that reason, I am a big fan of the managed service provider model.  In this model, there is a managed service, it is a tested, functional, easy to spin up service, and an IT consultant or shop or department uses this to provide backup services to their own customers and users.  This scenario puts the management and oversight in the hands of a trusted and professional IT person.  The actual back-end is managed by an experienced backup service provider.  Sounds good!

So, what am a getting at, what is my point?  Basically, I started The Backup Plan in 2005 to address this need.  The Backup Plan has grown to be a managed service provider, with resellers using our services, taking advantage of our infrastructure and experience, to provide backup services to their own customers.  The Backup Plan has chosen the best of the vendors out there, combined their offerings with some best practices, documentation, and rules, and created a solution that addresses the needs of quite a few companies as well as end users.  But that is not the point of the blog.  The blog is here to explore and share ideas about backups.  What are good things to do?  What are the new players?  What technologies could change the game?  Please, check me a bit if I self-promote too heavily.