… you probably will.
the question is: how much time and money will you spend to recover the files?
an alarming 1 in 3 home-based businesses lost company data in a hard-drive failure in the past year. home-based accountants, bookkeepers and tax practitioners not immune. and they have more to lose than most home-based businesses.
no wonder, then, that hardware vendors are rushing backup and recovery products to market.
ami-partners estimates that home-based businesses in the united states are on track to invest a sizeable $1.3 billion on it security and storage-related solutions this year. home-based business owners are focusing on areas such as:
- data security,
- data backup and
- disaster recovery.
the bulk of the spending last year was on security software, storage hardware and security services. these comprised nearly 87% of all security and storage spending. by 2009, spending in just these three areas will exceed $1.1 billion for home-based businesses.
“many factors are fueling this increased spending,” says jacqueline atkinson, new york-based analyst at ami. “one of the biggest is the expanded use of the internet to extend business reach and administer online applications. owners have to be better equipped to safeguard sensitive customer and personal information and adequately store and manage documentation.”
alarmingly, 40% of owners in the u.s. experienced loss of company data in the past year as a result of an electronic attack, while over 33% suffered a loss due to hard-drive failure. and while 79% of pc-owning home-based businesses report having some form of it security in place, this still leaves close to three million vulnerable to data loss, steep recovery costs or business downtime.
“nonetheless, this is an attractive market for security and storage vendors focused on home-based businesses-we see robust plans from new buyers this year,” says atkinson. “new security investments are likely to go toward anti-virus, anti-spam and firewall, as these solutions have gained the most acceptance in the hbb space.”
with regard to it storage, owners rely more heavily on compact disks and external pc drives to backup data files. however, backing up data over the internet is emerging as a significant trend. owners are opting for offsite storage solutions, and reveal the strongest adoption plans for online storage and backup this year.
“the online marketplace is increasingly becoming a main resource for hbbs,” says ms. atkinson. “they want easy to access technology that they can fit-and-forget.” vendors such as mcafee and symantec who offer across-the-board solutions with simple online administrative tools have the strongest presence in the hbb market. this is a key opportunity as the majority of hbbs report re-investing in software and services on an annual basis.
nearly 15 million hbbs in the u.s. access the internet. the sheer size of the market presents new opportunities for vendors to capitalize on as hbbs invest more and more in a wide spectrum of security and storage software applications, hardware, and support services-installed in-house and increasingly deployed over the web.