But whether your company is in health care or finance; small or large; whether you’re located in Tornado Alley or the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast – one of the most important questions about data recovery is, “In-house or offsite?”

Many business owners and administrators like the idea of keeping things in-house.  They feel that keeping things on-site helps protect sensitive data safe while keeping costs down.  This is understandable – after all, why not let your own IT team handle things instead of paying monthly and yearly service fees to have someone else do it for you

The truth is, there are four good reasons to let someone else take control of your company’s data storage and recovery:

1. Experience matters.  So does specialization.  You might have a world-class IT team with an encyclopedic knowledge of backup and recovery.  But chances are, that’s not all they do.  While an offsite service provider does only one thing – store and recover data – your IT team probably does a dozen or more jobs in any given week.  Data recovery is a highly specialized field, and it requires a knowledgeable staff. Going off-site gives you access to a team of focused specialists that you can’t get from within your company.
2.  Location is critical.  When choosing a data storage facility, the ideal location should be close enough that your employees can get there if they need to – but not so close that the site is at risk for getting hit by, say, the same hurricane, earthquake, or tornado that puts your facility out of commission.  Opting for an offsite solution gives you the freedom to choose a location that makes sense for you and your employees – and it may help you bet back on your feet faster.
3. You might not have the space, or the infrastructure.  Service providers that specialize in data storage and recovery are built with disasters in mind – unlike, say, a typical office building, a data storage facility is more likely to have been constructed with stability and safety in mind. Single-purpose data storage facilities are built to withstand disasters and hacker attacks, and they’re more likely to feature advanced security features that the average company doesn’t usually invest in.  Plus, these facilities have been designed by people who know the industry – they’re built to be adaptable and to grow without running out of space.
4. Data recovery is an investment, not an expense.  It’s easy to see data recovery as just one more costly contract – but that’s not the case.  Sure, it might be cheaper to get your in-house IT staff to take control of your company’s data storage and recovery plan.  But if they don’t do it right, the money you save up front might not be enough to cover the costs of lost data down the road.  This is one case where you really do get what you pay for.

What do you think?  Do you handle your data storage in-house or offsite?  Why?  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Investing in Offsite Data Storage: Four Reasons to Outsource is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

Distributors must stay relevant to solution providers as the technology landscape shifts.  The danger for distributors is that solutions providers start dealing directly with Cloud providers, and miss out the distribution middle man.

Cloud Computing is not just another fad which distributors need to slightly adjust their business model to. In the past businesses tweaked their models through charging for services they had produced for free, such as tech support.

The Cloud phenomenon is different and appears to be here to stay, leading to distributors having a bit of an identity crisis. They want to get in on the action, especially as the industry is set to become a $241 billion industry by 2020. However they are unsure where they fit into the equation.

UBM estimate that up to 38% of all IT expenditure is going to move to purchasing off-premise solutions by 2013. To meet this a third of all solution providers are aiming to change their business model within this time period.

Where distributors may not loose out so badly is within the Private Cloud space. In this market companies are buying hardware in order to produce a Cloud infrastructure behind their own corporate firewalls. IDC estimates that Private Cloud implementations will grow at an annual rate of 28.8% through to 2015.

It is the SMEs which are more likely to jump two footed into a Public Cloud solution hosted by a 3^rd party provider, producing no need for a distributor. This is the market where distributors they will loose out, and could be labelled as unnecessary purchasing mechanisms.

So what about the distributors who are supplying the Cloud providers themselves? There is a harsh irony in the way that IT distributors have supplied Cloud providers in the past few years inadvertently supplying the force that hopes to steal their sales. However distributors have no choice other than to supply the future.

For distributors the future is unsure but may not be a gloomy as some would have you believe. In the past they have proven to adapt well to changes in computing. The task now is to establish a firm identity in the Cloud space. Perhaps the safe option would be to specialise in working with companies implementing Private Cloud solutions.

How will Cloud Computing Affect IT Distribution is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

For an organisation with an expansive IT environment or one planning rapid expansion an agentless architecture is extremely beneficial.

Such a solution means that only one backup agent is required across an entire network.  Backups can therefore be managed from a single console making administration infinitely easier.

The software is generally installed on a dedicated backup box and if granted with universal administrative privileges, can ‘agentlessly’ browse across any network.

The pricing model which goes hand in hand with having agentless architecture is another attractive aspect. This is because of its simplicity.

Often the cost of backup will seem extremely reasonable on the surface. However then the end customer will be hit with agent, plugin and licensing costs. If their environment is large, these can be extensive.

Asigra’s architecture allows Backup Technology to offer a service whereby the pricing structure is entirely based upon the amount of data being backed up. There are no hidden costs whatsoever relating to licensing, plugins or agents.

In addition support is provided across Windows, Linux, UNIX, Novell & IBM, again from a single point of administration.

When choosing a backup product do not be mis-led by extremely cheap data quotas, only to find that there are huge setup and licensing costs. Choose a service which is geared for the enterprise market and which envisages expansion with ease.

Advantages of Going Agentless with Asigra is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

He came back talking about de-duplication and the fact that data was being stored on their servers rather than on the customer’s site. He then concluded by shrugging his shoulders and saying “The future is bright so give us all your data.”

For a start de-duplication is not a differentiating factor which other software is missing. Secondly the whole point of off-site backup is to get data offsite, so the second part of his answer did not make any sense. So what is the secret to companies offering unlimited storage?

The model which such companies use is that the few users which utilise a large amount of storage will be balanced out by those that use little storage.

The other part of the model which is talked about in the interview is economies of scale. The more customers which join the more storage costs fall.

So the short fall is that someone is going to place all your business data (an unlimited amount) on the cheapest hardware which they can get through bulk purchasing. Then hope that the law of averages work out so that other companies will not eat too far into their unlimited quota.

In this scenario profits rely on making hardly anything per customer but having millions of customers. However when you see this model failing for the likes of Mozy in the consumer market, it does not bode well for the business market. Mozy was one of the original pioneers in the space and unlimited storage is a great concept. However as people create an ever increasingly large digital footprint, it is simply unrealistic.

Tread carefully when considering an unlimited service, especially when it comes to protecting your business data.

Why Unlimited Backup Quotas are Unrealistic. is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

“By the end of this century, intense, heavy rainstorms that now typically happen only once every 20 years are likely to occur about twice a decade”, the report stated.

So far, the predictions made in the report seem to be accurate:  The last few years have seen a heightened level of natural disasters, prompting thousands of businesses around the world to reassess their continuity and disaster recovery plans. With more and more sensitive data being stored electronically, these companies have begun to take online data backup services seriously in a bid to reduce downtime and avoid extensive loss in revenue.

Last month, Thailand experienced its worst flooding in seven years. Bangkok – the center of commerce and trade in the country – was completely inundated, and hundreds of businesses lost a considerable amount of revenue as a result. Most businesses in Thailand had been slow to adopt cloud computing and backup data centers as part of a contingency plan, but in the wake of these historic floods, companies are taking their data backup seriously.

Monsinee Keeratikrainon, manager of global research firm Frost & Sullivan, said demand in cloud computing services was set to expand more quickly because of natural disasters like the flooding in Thailand.

“The cloud will likely get more attention from companies as they prepare business continuity plans for any future crisis,” she said.

So far, backup centers in Thailand have received a lot of attention:  Demand for offsite data storage centers in Thailand rose by nearly 300% during the floods, mainly from manufacturers who needed to transfer their data to a safe location.

“The cloud market in Thailand is expected to grow by 50% to 1.5 billion baht (USD $47,800,000) next year,” Keeratikrainon said. This growth has the potential to prompt an investment of at least 500 million baht (USD $15,000,000) in expanding online data centers to accommodate demand.

But the growth of the cloud market isn’t confined to Thailand. As natural disasters increase worldwide, the demand for backup data centers is increasing with it.  The United States has recently experienced one of its worst years in natural disasters. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US experienced over $55 billion in damages from natural disasters in 2011, the worst in US history.  This has prompted US businesses to embrace data backup and disaster recovery systems. IT companies that provide support and strategy services for small and medium-sized businesses have experienced significant growth, citing the rise in natural disasters as one cause. ProviDyn, one such company, has increased revenue by 75% in the past year, and recently expanded their staff by 25 percent.

“At its basic level, controlling data is about controlling risk, which means being prepared in the event of disaster so that you can restore your business without losing its most important asset – information,” said Blaine Rigler, general manager of US-based Iron Mountain Data Backup and Recovery. “The amount of information that needs to be protected is growing at an incredible pace, creating new data challenges every day.”

And no other industry feels these challenges more than the healthcare industry. Natural disasters can cause a healthcare facility more than financial loss; it can potentially affect the lives of its patients if their personal charts or prescriptions are lost. Having their data stored remotely is crucial to restoring the facility’s operating conditions. Last May, a tornado leveled St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Mo., completely wiping out their Electronic Health Records (EHR). But, because their medical records were all stored in a remote data center, they were able to reduce the devastation of the tornado and quickly return to providing for their patients.

“Within seven days, we had the EHR system up and running again, having retrieved the data from a mobile medical unit,” said Michael McCreary, chief of technology services for Sisters of Mercy Health Systems,  the organization in charge of St. John’s rebuilding efforts.

“We were lucky to have a paperless system that could be restored fairly quickly,” McCreary continued. “Some of the hospital’s old paper records got blown 70 miles away.”

Rise in Global Disasters Means Rise in Data Backup Solutions is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

It is worth reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of these before reaching a decision on which way to go.

The main considerations are what you are wishing to achieve, and how far your budget will stretch. Understanding the difference between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity is therefore essential. It is worth firstly defining these.

‘Disaster Recovery’ refers to the process of recovering data in the event of a disaster. So the disaster occurs and then the work is done to recover the data or entire infrastructure. The time frame in which this is achieved gradually closes until you reach ‘Business Continuity.’

Business Continuity is a scenario whereby you can actually continue your business through a disaster, without any form of disruption.

Let’s first take a replication scenario with no ‘Point in Time Backup’ procedure in place. There is a storm and lightening strikes your primary offices, frying your main servers.  However all is well because you have been running real-time replication to a secondary location. You can therefore continue operations as normal.

However let’s look at a couple of perhaps more likely scenarios. A file corruption occurs on the primary site. This is replicated to the secondary site making a non-corrupt version impossible to regain. Or a deletion occurs on the primary server. This is mirrored onto the secondary server, again making file recovery impossible.

With a proper backup procedure in place you can refer back to a point in time i.e. when the last scheduled backup was run. If the backup product stores multiple generations you can refer back to a version of the file/database, before the corruption/deletion occurred.

So there are certainly advantages of having real time replication in place.  However the decision to implement replication as a sole DR/BC solution is ill-researched. This is because in many scenarios a secondary real-time mirror of your data is useless.

The other point about replication is that you need much resource in the form of bandwidth to replicate on a continual basis. Backup generally takes place out of office hours when bandwidth demand is nil. Furthermore for replication you can expect to double all your hardware costs.

A further expense is achieving the geographical separation necessary to make it worthwhile. Some businesses choose to solely replicate to secondary servers onsite. However in disaster recovery terms there is little point in such a solution.

The dream scenario is of course to have both backup and replication rolled into one. This way you can recover to a point in time and also maintain a high availability BC solution.

However to have both is expensive and in the current climate businesses often have to choose. Without question it is paramount to prioritise having a ‘Point in Time Backup’ solution in place.

Backup Technology are able to provide a solution which provides ‘Point in Time Backup’ as well as seamless Business Continuity. This is achieved through maintaining an up to date virtual replica of your environment rather than through replication. In the event of a disaster the task is therefore simple. We recover the small amount of changes to your warm standby server. The solution ensures that both Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives are achieved without the huge costs of implementing real-time replication.

Furthermore BTL work tirelessly alongside Asigra to continually develop our DR/ BC offerings in order to keep ahead of the ever increasingly demanding needs of the world today.

Backup Vs Replication is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

The report highlighted the lax attitude which is being adopted by councils with regards to keeping data secure.

There are 1,035 cases of UK councils experiencing data loss between 2008 and 2011. Of particular concern in the report was the exposure of data relating to children, as well as other vulnerable members of society.

One incident in Wales involved Cardiff council wrongly sending the names and addresses of 2,400 children, on the child protection registry, directly to the NHS.

Kent and Buckinghamshire were among the councils which lost the most data, with 72 cases each. Just below them, Northamptonshire and Essex had 48 and 62 cases respectively.

Wales are arguably the worst in the UK at keeping data secure however, with 8 out of 22 councils experiencing data loss in the last three years. This prompted Anne Jones at the ICO in Wales to express “serious concern.”

“It’s vital that local authorities properly live up to their legal responsibilities to keep personal data secure, particularly where it is sensitive information about children and young people” said Jones.

Data loss is becoming increasingly more concerning with more users utilising an ever-increasing array of mobile devices. There is often no remote deletion policy in place for such hardware. In addition with many organisations pushing more of their infrastructure into the Cloud, the urgency to implement tighter security measures has never been more crucial.

Concerning Lack of Data Security Among UK Councils is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

Many companies are now swaying much more heavily towards renting data centre space. This has become especially apparent during the downturn of the economy, between 2009-10. Many sectors have not opted to commit funds to construction within this period, according to Ted Chamberlin, research director at Gartner.

This is because leasing allows much more flexibility in terms of expansion and avoids heavy initial investments. If a company experiences a heavy increase in traffic they can tap into a third party provider’s extra resources.

The main concern with building your own data centre is planning for future capacity. If a company expands quickly and owns its own premises there is the potential of facing hefty bills for maintenance, equipment or revamping.

Upgrading your own facilities on a regular basis is a huge job and can often present you with the same or larger costs than the initial build.

However not all the factors are stacked against having your own infrastructure. There is the issue of politics. The US Patriot Act for instance gives the American government the right to delve into any data stored on its shores, a huge detractor for many European businesses. Furthermore there is the UK Data protection Act which places red tape around moving data out of the EU.

Another issue is security. With your own infrastructure there is less danger of  someone gaining access to your data. Third party providers have also been  known to place pressures on customers to move out, to make room for larger customers. It is therefore essential that companies have iron-clad contracts in place, when utilising data centre space.

In conclusion there are advantages and disadvantages for both building data centres and leasing them. Many companies are now adopting a combination of both options. Often this is structured in a way which allows less important aspects of a company’s infrastructure to be outsourced, while retaining the more essential data within a purpose built infrastructure.

Approaching the Data Centre Market is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

“We believe the numbers released today well reflect the UKs position as a leading global data centre market, and look forward to refining the model and using it in other markets,” said Andrew Jay, Head of Data Centres EMEA.

Data centres are cropping up all over the world and the survey found that 7.6 million square metres now exist throughout the world.

The Data Center Development Index (DCDI) ranks markets according to their state of development. It does this through taking into account, size of the economy, number of data centres and influence of technology, power consumption and human resource. This index has ranked the UK just behind the west coast of the US, highlighting a strong global market position.

Studies have revealed that British data centres consume 6.4 GW of power every year. This is enough to facilitate 6 million homes.  Furthermore power output is set to increase by 6.7% in the next year. However this is far behind the expected global increase, set to rise by 19%. These figures represent the hugely growing efficiency of data centre operations in the UK.

Investment in data centre operations is also set to increase. The next year will see a growth of £2.15 billion. This will allow construction of more data centres in addition to existing facilities being upgraded.

Growth is set to be most significant in the SE of England, rising by 68%. With Scotland, the NW of England and the Midlands also seeing substantial growth.

“When you look at the size of the operations of just a handful of organisations, you quickly get a sense of the market’s scale,” stated George Rockett, co-founder of Data-Center Dynamics.

Booming UK Data Centre Market is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

The project ensures that the government stays compliant with regulations such as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) which states that only US citizens may access data regarding weapons, as well as other items which have been banned from export on the US munitions list.

An Amazon spokesman said “because Amazon Web Services’ GovCloud is physically and logically accessible by US persons only, government agencies can now manage more heavily regulated data in AWS while remaining compliant with strict federal requirements.”

Amazon have tactically worked alongside the US federal government in order to help achieve their target of shutting down approximately 40% of the 2,000 plus data centres they have, saving approximately $3 billion.

Other big players are however in the mix to gain responsibility of government data including Google, IBM and Microsoft. Overall $20 billion in revenue has been identified that can be utilised to move a quarter of the federal IT infrastructure to the Cloud, saving $5 billion annually.

Amazon’s new offering complies with all the other portions of its public cloud but additionally allows compliance with other regulations governing federal data such as the Federal Information Security Management Act and Portability Act. In addition the new invocation supports many existing security certifications including FISMA, SAS-70, ISO 27001, FIPS 140-2 compliant end points, and PCI DSS Level 1.

Amazon Role Out G-Cloud is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.