The importance of online data backups has been highlighted by the tale of Atlantis Health Plan, an organisation which was nearly wiped out by an electrical fire.

Bad luck hit the company when an electrical fire wiped out everything in the 10,000 square feet of space which Atlantis operated in, resulting in a large-scale relocation of systems and services to a different location elsewhere in New Jersey, just across the Hudson River, the Associated Press revealed.

Had it not been for an extremely important investment in online disaster recovery, the systems may not have been recovered at all, and the business would not have been able to return as quick as it did - in just one day.

Despite the emotional and physical toll which can regularly be associated with such life-changing events, the course of the business itself meant it could continue to operate as the usual capacity from very early on.

Last week, Dan Blacharski of ITworld explained that data recovery is treated in a similar fashion to smoke alarms - regularly left alone when not working and sorted out at a later date, despite the dangers of doing so.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.