Tape Backups
For years, backup to tape has dominated with respect to data backup. Well, the votes are in and tape backup has been shown to fail up to 50% of the time when it comes to restoring data. As long as you don't experience a disaster or a server problem, then tape backup should be fine for you. However, even if for some reason you have not experienced a problem, the numbers are not on your side and it is only a matter of time until your business is made part of the statistics.
 With businesses experiencing more growth and backup windows shrinking, the backup to tape begins to be a problem.
Furthermore, if a business wants to encrypt their data when performing a tape backup, plan on doubling the time it takes to backup. Want to verify too? Then plan on doubling the time it takes to backup again.
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Tape vs. Online Data Backup
Believe it or not, online data backup has been around for quite some time, but has recently caught on with many business owners because of the security and reliability that it brings all at a cost-effective price. In order to restore from a tape backup it requires most of the time one of your IT resources to retrieve the backup tape and manually restore the data back to your server (assuming there is data on the tape). An online backup happens automatically on a daily basis and requires little or no IT intervention, allowing your IT resources to focus on other areas of the business.
Realize that with a tape backup, there is considerable downtime even if you are able to restore from the backup tape. This cost of downtime, or loss of data is not often calculated in to the cost of tape backup.
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