BATH, England, March 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --



Small and medium sized business (SMBs) in the UK are missing out on insurance deals available to them if they have a business continuity plan in place. This is what Cloud Direct, a cloud services broker (CSB), found when they surveyed more than 500 UK SMBs earlier this month, March 2014.

The survey of 558 business and IT decision-makers revealed that more than half (54%) of respondents were unaware there were insurance benefits in having a business continuity plan. This is despite 68% of people saying they already having a business continuity plan in place.

The British Insurance Brokers' Association (Biba) has long committed to supporting business resilience measures with reduced insurance premiums and excesses. To promote this stance in 2012, they conducted a joint survey with the Cabinet Office, which found that 83% of insurers questioned would give a discount or improve terms to a business interruption policy if a business continuity plan were in place.  

Cloud Direct's March 2014 survey also found that almost one in every six UK businesses (15%) still don't know what a business continuity plan is. This is despite 44% of businesses having experienced some form of business disruption - either through human error, IT failure or natural disaster.

Eliza Rawlings, managing director of Cloud Direct, said: "It's frustrating that businesses don't know about the insurance perks and we hope this survey has helped some businesses from that point of view.

"But it's also a little disconcerting that nearly a third (32%) of businesses don't have a business continuity plan in place. Just think of the recent storms, floods and power outages that have made businesses suffer terribly. What if that was one of your key business partners or suppliers and your business suffered as a result?  A really good business continuity plan will help those businesses anticipate, prevent, mitigate and recover from those kinds of unplanned events."

To help UK organisations with their business continuity planning, Cloud Direct has developed a Business Continuity toolkit, which is free to download here.

About  Cloud  Direct  -  http://www.clouddirect.net 

Cloud Direct is a multi-award winning independent Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) and Gold Investor in People. We give businesses easy and secure access to cloud services for increased agility, productivity and competitiveness.

With 10 years of experience and 2,000 customers, Cloud Direct provides enterprise-class solutions packaged and integrated for business use - along with consolidated billing and an award-winning service.

Cloud Direct offers automated ticketing, billing and access for all services, including:

• Online backup, disaster recovery and storage
• Hosted email and collaboration
• Virtualised computing and hosted desktop
• Secure, resilient data communications and networks
• Carrier-grade hosted telephony (VoIP) and video communications
• Software as a Service (SaaS) and line-of-business applications

SOURCE Cloud Direct