Archiving, Backup: What's the Best Data Solution for an SMB?

Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) may not understand the differences between a backup and archive tool — so how should you explain it to them?

Backup and recovery software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications solutions provider Backupify covered this discussion in a blog post, explaining why an SMB would need a backup solution, an archive solution, or both.

Backupify's Sheila Lahar summed up the differences in a simple sentence: "Archiving is for discovery while backups are for recovery."

Since Lahar's memory trick may need a little more explaining, so she divided the article up into two sections: when to use an archiving tool and when to use an backup tool.

When to use a archiving tool

The differences between the two solutions has to do with why the SMBs needs the copied data. SMBs looking to copy data for both auditing and compliance tasks should leverage an archiving tool.

Businesses in regulated industries more than likely use some type of an archiving solution — or at least they should. Archiving protects a business by making data available, possibly for investigators and regulators.

When to use a backup tool

A backup solution, on the other hand, protects a business in time of a disaster. For example, a security breach or a user error.

A solution of this kind creates copies of data intended to maximize speed of recovery, restoring any imperative data for business continuity (BC). The decision to purchase a backup tool, unlike with purchasing an archiving tool, normally comes within an IT department — or a suggestion from a provider.