When I was an engineer, one position I held had me responsible for making sure county emergency radio communications systems and their ancillary equipment had better than 99.999% uptime (we actually shot for six nines—not five).

That meant architectures with mirrored power supplies, hot switchover power systems, redundant radio/microwave circuits, and huge battery backup systems. When someone’s life is dependent upon communications systems working, backups are a key part of system design and maintenance. Backups not only can save lives, but they also can save your business from a potentially catastrophic outage.