UnicomVault will step in to help protect the majority of small businesses that may have binned their paper mountain by going digital, but more than half of which are failing to back-up their electronic files - and risking a complete loss of data.
"We researched the issue earlier this year - and discovered that just short of 55% of the businesses we surveyed said that they did not back-up their data in any way - a much higher figure than we expected," said Chris Earle, Operations Director, Unicom.
"The remainder use outdated methods such as tape back-up or copying to another PC - but these methods have their own faults; they often require the user to remember to intervene manually, or, for instance, insert a new tape.
"The key issue seemed to be the hassle-factor - or simply not understanding what's required. We developed UnicomVault to be both hassle-free and a simple-to-use automatic back-up solution that stores files in our UK-based data vaults.
"The data stored day-to-day on a business computer will often be critical to the running of the company. A fire, a burglary, or even a power surge, a hardware failure, a software glitch or even a wrong click of a mouse and every single piece of information relating to accounts, tax, personnel, sales, customers and stock can be lost for good.
"In most cases that could be the accumulation of years' of data - imagine having to manually recover or replace it."
Of the 799 businesses questioned in Unicom's initial survey, 55% said that they didn't have any back-up at all. The remaining 45% used various methods for their back-up - some more safe than others.
Five per cent back-up to tape storage, while 6% back-up online, 14% back-up to a different PC and 20% use 'another method'.
"It's really quite shocking that there are still many small businesses that don't back up their data. Until you lose your data, you don't realise how valuable it is to your organisation," added Chris Earle.
"At worst, data loss can put you out of business, and at the very least it will cause hours if not weeks and months of costly disruption in service to customers.