Why It’s Time to Add Mobile Backup to Your Service Offering

Most of us can’t bear to go more than 10 minutes without checking our smartphones, tablets or laptops. In many respects, this addiction to technology has dramatically altered our personal lives, but what we don’t always realize is that most of the time when we look at our phone, it’s to check in with the office.

Mobility has become an essential element of operations for most businesses and that means big changes in IT needs. Since we take mobile technology for granted in our personal lives, it may not even have occurred to your customers that managing mobile devices in the workplace requires new regulations and procedures. By proactively adding mobile solutions to your offerings and educating your customers about the need for mobile IT support, you’ll put yourself in the position to sell and manage a whole new category of solutions.

A New Challenge: Mobile Data Protection

One of the most critical (and often overlooked) aspects of mobile business is data backup and security for the information that lives on these devices. These days, employees aren’t just checking their personal email on mobile devices, they’re actually working on them as well. And to work on them effectively, they need everything that’s on their office devices on their mobile devices as well (files, documents, etc.). What’s more, employees are now working from anywhere – trains, planes, coffee shops, soccer fields, etc. That means sensitive and important company data has also become remote in nature. And just like company data that lives on desktops at the office, it should be properly backed up and secured.

Unfortunately, too many businesses are leaving these devices unprotected without any type of data insurance. An overwhelming majority, 95 percent to be exact, of US IT managers EVault surveyed said company data resides on mobile devices of their employees. But the more alarming, corresponding discovery was that a whopping 40 percent of those IT managers have no plan to protect mobile data. Larger organizations (1,000+ employees) are even more likely to lack a plan than smaller ones.

The Cost of Not Protecting a Single Laptop

As you might expect, laptops and mobile phones are stolen or lost at a much higher rate than on-premise computers and servers.  According to a study conducted by the Ponemon Institute, 329 organizations collectively lost over 86,000 laptops in 2010. That’s an astounding number, especially considering that the monetary value associated with a lost or stolen laptop lies not just in the hardware but also in what’s stored on them. The same study estimated the average cost of a lost laptop at about $49,000. There aren’t too many laptops out there that retail for that much money – which means the estimated cost of data loss, while difficult to quantify, is in the tens of thousands. Clearly, the security of these endpoint devices is vital, and yet so many companies overlook it.  This is an ideal business opportunity for you, the trusted advisor to your customers.  Help them understand both the potential expense and the security risks associated with mobile devices and help them design a solution specific to their needs.

Making the Case: Data Protection is Data Insurance

SMBs and mid-market customers who have limited budgets are often hesitant to add new services and might try to convince themselves that mobile data backup isn’t necessary. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Your customers probably have liability insurance for their businesses and don’t question that it’s a necessary expense.  Unprotected data is a huge liability and the decision to insure it should be similarly viewed as non-negotiable. Without a doubt, mobile backup is another arm of insurance that’s critical to business continuity and success.

Fortunately, today, the options are flexible, affordable, and secure, which means you can present your customers with a number of compelling solutions.

Next Steps

As an MSP, you must offer your customers data protection solutions that are focused on protecting and securing mobile devices. Failing to protect just one mobile device can spell trouble for a business and severely jeopardize data security and business continuity.

Terry Cunningham, President and General Manager of EVault, is an experienced, hands-on senior leader with a track record of success in building organizations to both realize their full potential and work well with the channel to maximize sales and opportunity. Cunningham was honored as a CRN Channel Chief in both 2011 and 2012, and the EVault Cloud-Connected Service Provider Program was named a “5-Star Program” in the 2011 CRN Partner Guide.