On Protecting Your Integrity And Your Credibility

A few years ago, small IT companies could a make a pretty good profit on disaster recovery services and automated data backup systems.

They had a great “fact” to help them. There were a number of versions that went something like this:

According to a Gartner study, 80% of businesses that suffered major data loss due to a disaster (such as hurricane or fire damage) went out of business within three years.

Protect Your Integrity and Credibility

… but it can be hard to find.

Sometimes it was a Gartner study. Or a FEMA report. Sometimes it was from IBM. It was 2 out of 3, or 70%, or 90%. They referenced Hurricane Katrina sometimes, other times 9/11.

Funny thing, no one could seem to find the original source.

Now, was the whole IT industry scamming the market? Or were these small businesses just so desperate, they were willing to repeat without question claims they had read somewhere, and had come to accept as fact? Continue reading