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Why You Need to Prepare Your Office for Power Outages

It’s stormy season in the pacific northwest again and we all know what that means: power outages. Power outages are a normal part of everyday life for us Washingtonians and we’re all more or less prepared for losing power for long periods of time. But one thing always scratches at the back of our minds when we lose power or hear thunder, “are my electronics protected?”. The fear of losing high priced electronics such as computers, televisions and network gear is highly justified; nearly every time a power outage is reported, we get a call from somebody saying that their devices have either fried or just won’t turn back on anymore.

For residential clients, a power outage, surge, or lightning strike might mean losing a personal computer that can be easily replaced. But for businesses, a critical power event can be far more devastating. Servers, firewalls, switches, network storage devices and backup hard drives can all be lost in the blink of an eye causing halts to productivity and loss of data potentially costing thousands and thousands of dollars. No matter what way you look at it, power outages are going to affect your business.

The best protection against power outages? Battery backups and surge protectors! We all know about these, we know we should be using them, but for some reason we just can’t bring ourselves to getting them. If you need the extra push, here are three reasons you should be installing battery backups before the harsh weather is in full swing.

  1. They allow safe shutdown of computer and servers. Beyond just keeping your devices from powering off or getting fried when a power outage occurs, battery backups come with USB cables which will connect to your computers and shut your hardware down for you automatically. This is especially important and useful if a power outage occurs after hours.

  2. They can prevent halts to productivity during small outages and flickering. Power flickers happen more frequently than any other type of energy event in the pacific northwest. When they do occur, devices not on battery backups will likely shut down causing data loss, reboots, and general frustration. Battery backups will allow you to continue working through small outages and flickers without having to worry about losing your work.

  3. They will protect your hardware. The average business server costs around $4000 and contains upwards of 8-10 years of data. If a power outage or a lightning strike causes a surge, it can completely destroy the internal components of your server and databases. It’s a no brainer, buy a battery backup so you can have peace of mind.

UPS’s are not expensive comparatively to data loss or hardware damage. Below are a few products we can personally recommend. If you need assistance getting the automatic shutoff functionality configured or properly setting up the UPS, Kitsap Networking and Sequim IT are on standby to help you get your devices protected today!

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