What is Assurance™? Is it an appliance? What makes it different? Why should I trust my data to you? How can I be sure that you'll have all my data backed up? What color is an orange? Will the Cubbies ever win another World Series? Why do hot dogs come in packs of ten while hot dog buns come in packs of eight? These are all important questions.

Having a backup system in place is absolutely critical in our digital age. Company documents, tax records, personal family photos, that novel you've been working on for the last ten years, you name it: almost everything is digital in a world going paperless, and while you're less likely to lose a paper copy of something than you are a digital copy, let's agree that almost nothing gets printed anymore. Your e-mail correspondence, notes punched into your smart phone, whatever it might be - you need a reliable backup that isn't susceptible to human error.

If you're reading this, then you're on the right track. Please take a few minutes of your time and continue reading; whether or not Assurance™ is right for you, a backup system is - that's for sure!

We've seen hundreds of hard drives fail, and while over 90% of the time we're able to recover the damaged goods, there's always that nearly 10% that get the bad news. Consider this - where would you be if suddenly you became unable to get your data from your computer? Sure, you'd call Affinity and most likely get good news, but we can't be sure of that - not to mention the nerve-wracking two or three hours before you hear anything at all! Let's take the lack of a backup system out of the equation.

So you're backing up your company's accounting files to a flash drive. That's good! It's a proactive measure. The problem is that it's not failsafe. Perhaps it gets lost. Perhaps it gets damaged. Maybe it wasn't backing up the whole time when you thought it was. What if someone stole it? It's tough to say, but there's always something that can go wrong.

But you've got a robust file server with everything being backed up on a tape drive - and your IT guy even checks to make sure they work! That's wonderful - it doesn't get a whole lot better than that. However, we do need to remember that other things can happen, too. What about a fire? Theft? Flood damage? Electrical surge? Time to wave bye-bye to twelve years' worth of company data and go cry yourself to sleep.

This is why off-site backup systems were developed - to take out the guess work and make use of multiple backup locations. At Affinity, we've taken state-of-the-art technology and made it better. How, you ask? Well, we made the web-based client even more user friendly and, well, we have a copy of your data securely stored in our Traverse City facility!

What good does that do me, you ask? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Please continue reading the Assurance™ Frequently Asked Questions. We're convinced that you'll find the answers you're looking for. If not, well, feel free to contact us anytime. If you're looking for our Assurance™ Overview documentation, click here.

Thank you for choosing Affinity for all of your technology needs!

What is Assurance™?

Assurance™ is a secure, fully automated, state-of-the-art off-site data backup solution with full versioning support that is replicated to multiple off-site storage facilities. Centered on small business, Assurance maintains a copy of your important information at our Traverse City data center to minimize downtime in the event of a disaster and allows for full availability from any web browser, 24/7/365.

How does Assurance™ compare to other online backup providers?

Developed with small business and corporations in mind, Assurance is the best possible off-site solution for your dollar. Our competitors charge more than we do almost across the board, and many don't even provide backup software or a web-based portal for remote file restoration.

Always remember that with Assurance, a backup copy of all your data is kept locally - right here in Traverse City - and is stored securely. Here's how we compare to some of the big name competition:

Service Quota Price/Month Price/Year Location

We are happy to provide Assurance service to our residential customers, but our system was not developed with mass storage of music and videos in mind. While our residential-level competitors such as Carbonite and SoS do not provide the same levels of redundancy or local data availability we do, they do offer unlimited online storage for a cheaper bottom line.