Power disruptions can be crippling to a small business if it’s a frequent occurrence. Downtime can decrease productivity and cause untimely disruptions to both internal and external communications, costing you time and money. To maximize your IT uptime and to ensure your business operations run smoothly, it’s vital to prepare for everything from power surges and voltage sags to complete blackouts.
Here are some important steps to power-proofing your business and your IT network:
Utilize Generators for Backup Power
Blackouts or brownouts can cause problems to your electrical equipment and one of the biggest risks is data loss. To ensure that your organization is completely prepared for any sort of power shortage, use generators as your backup and temporary power source.
Hire an Electrical Contractor
Appoint an electrical contractor who can provide a call out service 24 hours a day. If you are searching for an electrical contractor in the UK, you can use the Electrical Safety Register to choose from 20,000 tested and approved providers. If you are searching in the US, you can used directory sites such as Porch.com to find rated electrical contractors.
Don’t Forget Data Backup
Data backup and recovery is a service which should not be overlooked. All IT network providers will be able to offer you a backup service for your IT data and it’s essential that you can back everything up should you experience complete data loss.
Transient Voltage Surge Suppression (TVSS)
Power surges are extremely common in the workplace and can cause disruptions to your computer equipment as well as causing lights to flicker. But surge suppressors can help to minimize this problem.
Voltage Regulators
There are many types of power supply disruptions including power surges, voltage spikes and voltage dips, impulsive and oscillatory transients or frequency variation. All of these problems can be managed by voltage regulators. A voltage regulator can help to control any voltage fluctuations, line noise and swells and short circuits.
UPS Systems (Uninterruptible Power Supplies)
UPS systems can provide an external source of energy during a blackout or a brownout. This emergency electrical supply will ensure that there are no disruptions to your IT network and can give you 100% uptime. The UPS concept in not limited to PCs but can also be used to support other equipment and gadgets. For more information on different types of UPS systems, visit www.criticalpowersupplies.co.uk.
Move Over to the Cloud
Virtualization is one of the biggest talking points in recent times for business owners and IT managers. One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is that it could provide increased uptime (with some providers boasting figures of 99% uptime figures) so that you can you minimize the problems of disruptions to your network.
