ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

With credit tight and the potential (or reality) of a business slowdown looming, business owners can ill afford IT problems that will suck up valuable time, stymie employee productivity, leave customers and prospects hanging, and cost scarce cash to remedy.

By taking some basic steps to ensure computing system health, business owners can somewhat inoculate their organization against the threat of a crippling computer outage. That's according to Jonathan Huberman, previously the CEO of Iomega and now, following the EMC acquisition of Iomega, president of EMC's consumer and small business products division, who recommends the following 6 best practices to keep business computer system in optimal condition:

1. Tune-up regularly -- Have an IT professional check your IT systems every 3-6 months to prevent disasters before they happen
2. Backup your data -- This is the single most important step a business owner can take to ensure continuity when disaster strikes
3. Treat your data with respect -- Back up in multiple places, offsite, and/or online to guarantee your data won't be lost
4. Practice restoring from backup -- Right after a disaster is not the time to find out if your backup recovery works as it should
5. Document your system -- Maintain a list of your business applications and check that your backing up data from all of them and keep all software and hardware documentation in a secure location so you can find it quickly when you need to
6. Heed alarms -- More and more software includes diagnostic utilities that can warn of dangers, threats, or impending failure. Though it's tempting to ignore these alerts, they can allow you solve problems before they occur

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