Alternatives to conventional data archiving methods such as tape, CD's or external drives, are winning corporate converts

Here is a starting statistic, courtesy of research company IDC: 40 per cent of small and mid sized businesses never back up their data. Here's another that puts the first one in perspective: 70 per cent of small businesses go belly up within a year of suffering a major loss of data.

Companies that have come close to major system melt downs has caused them to switch to online backup, a fast-growing alternative to traditional archiving practices. Instead of storing files internally on backup media such as tape, CD's or external drives, businesses sign up for a software service that automatically copies files and sends them to remote servers via the Internet. If a fire or flood or any other unexpected disaster stikes your files remain safe and up to date. Same goes for more mundane threats such as computer viruses or laptop thieves.

The General Electric Co. signed a muti million dollar contract to perform online backups on more than 300,000 of it's computers around the world.

That a company the size of GE would allow its corporate information to travel over the Net - even secured by strong encryption - to reside in a tiny outfit's facility suggests the technology's benifits and cost advantages are finally winning over corporate IT. The shift online is also driven by disenchantment with conventional backup options.

Tape, long the preferred medium for archival storage, is susceptable to degradation and hard to search. CD's and external drives, the preferred choices of small and mid size businesses, need to be physically taken offsite by employees, who may lose or misplace them.

Perhaps the most compelling selling point is that online software allows companies to easily back up individual destops.

Online backup that happens automatcally and continuously takes the responsibility for backing up out of the individual user's hands and puts it back in reliable tech hands.