It’s a surprisingly frequent occurrence. I ask a CEO or high-level exec what their current backup solution is, and I get a blank stare in return. I often ask, “Well, you DO backup your data, right?” The answer is often, “no, but I know I should.” Being in the field of data storage, ours is a business of education; that’s why we’re happy to see new reports of online data backup breaking into the larger journalistic field. If this trend means more people getting serious about protecting their business data, we feel like we’ve succeeded at a core part of our mission. Here are a couple of articles we’ve found interesting:

Jason Fry of the Wall Street Journal was one of the first major newspapers to give an overview of online data backup in the consumer market. We’re great fans of the Journal, and think Jason has a great way of translating somewhat tech-filled ideas into English the every day reader can understand.

Back in July, ZDnet asked a great question: are backup tape systems obsolete? We found that it was an excellent article addressing a real dilemma facing many companies these days.

Most recently, the NY Times came out with an article tonight that emphasizes keeping copies of your important files in geographically distinct locations. As we’ve written a thousand times before, there is virtually nothing more important in a backup solution than insuring your backups make it off-site.

We feel that we’re reaching Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point here in terms of data storage. With data growing at nearly unfathomable rates every year, it’s a problem that isn’t going to go away. As more and more of our data is stored exclusively in electronic format, having an extensive and reliable backup solution isn’t just a good idea, it’s a requisite business practice.