Don't be an April Fool.  Data backup is extremely important for businesses.  If your data isn't backed up, or your backup solution isn't properly tested and maintained, your data could be at risk.  That's why March 31st is World Backup Day!  Check out and share the infographic and ask yourself, what would you do if you lost everything?

The expression on Drew's face is a perfect picture of what data loss looks like. There is nothing more frustrating than spending an entire day on a project, only to have it all disappear with a system error. Drew's mistake was that he was saving all of his work directly on his laptop. Not only is his work susceptible to a hard drive failure and the computer crashing, but his laptop is also at risk of being stolen along with all of his personal data.

Nature can be pretty impressive. It can interrupt the day-to-day operations of businesses, cause major damage, and cost your business in expensive downtime. Having a good business continuity plan (and ensuring you have it set in place) can make or break your company when mother nature comes knocking at your door.

Pixar, known for CG Animated films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Up, produced a short video about how they almost lost Toy Story 2 due to a simple linux command and faulty backup.

Nobody likes thinking or talking about this (except maybe if you are in the insurance business), but businesses are fragile entities. Enough hardship and loss will greatly weaken the foundation that keeps the business running smoothly. What if your business suffered from a fire, devastating flood, or even a misfortunate bolt of lightning that destroys your server? Would you be able to pick up the pieces and start over?

"As a business owner, when should I worry about implementing data backup for my company?"

The answer comes in the form of another question, "How much do you value your business?"

We can't stress how important data backup is for businesses. Backup is so important that March 31st is World Backup Day, a day for people and businesses to observe the importance of backing up data regularly.

Read on for World Backup Day's excellent Infographic.

Hard drives have been getting bigger (capacity-wise) and cheaper over the past decade which is great news for everyone. Toshiba predicts that in 2012 that over 2 zettabytes (2 trillion gigabytes!) of data will be created and replicated (double from 2010). While costs are going down, data growth is still a challenge for data centers and IT administrators.

It's January, it's 2012, and you know what that means! It's the time of year everyone tries to start fresh and make big changes in their lives to hopefully improve themselves. Does your Southern California business have goals and resolutions to work out for 2012?

It's always important to be prepared for emergencies, and for a small business these days even a minor disaster can have long term ramifications with serious consequences. Whether the disaster is short lived, like a power outage or hardware failure in your server, or a more serious event like a flood or fire, you want to be able to get back in business as quickly as possible Here are some steps Southern California businesses should take to prepare and add to their disaster plans.