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.

“As mobile devices and applications have become more user-friendly, affordable and powerful, the appeal to businesses of all types, including healthcare providers, has grown exponentially,” said Tim Herbert, vice president of CompTIA Research.

According to CompTIA’s Third Annual Healthcare IT Insights and Opportunities study, physicians have cited several reasons for switching to mobile healthcare tools, including increased productivity, improved patient care, and a potential system for accessing, storing and protecting Electronic Health Records (EHR).

CompTIA Research indicates that overall adoption of EHR systems is increasing:  38 percent of healthcare facilities are already operating with an EHR system in place, and nearly one-third of physicians are currently using their smart phones or personal tablets to access patients’ electronic health records. An additional 20 percent is expected to access EHR from their mobile devices within the next year.

As this trend toward EHR systems increases, the ability to share large quantities of information (for example, on the Health Information Exchange) will require flexibility, quick retrieval times, and substantial data capacity. Enter this new wave of mobile devices, and the cloud network.

Overall, the healthcare industry has been wary of storing EHR on the cloud. In fact, only five percent of healthcare providers have said they use the technology in their daily operations, according to the study.

“Generally, the healthcare industry has been slow to embrace cloud computing. This is especially true among the smaller medical practices, which comprise the vast majority of physician offices in the U.S.,” Herbert said.

But despite the slow start, Herbert remains optimistic. Healthcare providers are finding it difficult to move their data from one backup system to the next, as the amount of data they output increases. High-res medical imagery, for example, takes up much more space than it has in the past, and has forced medical companies into a costly cycle of buying and rebuying their next data storage system for additional space.

A private cloud network in place would erase these concerns for a healthcare center. Doctors can access their information, such as high-res medical images and patient data, from any mobile device despite its hardware and storage capacity, at incredible speed. And, since the mobile device is separate from the facility’s power supply, the physician’s critical information will not be lost in the case of a disaster scenario. In other words, it’s an inexpensive, highly effective Continuous Data Protection (CDP) system for healthcare providers.

Despite the current lag in adopting cloud network solutions, doctors are clearly integrating mobile technologies into their daily practices, relying more and more on digital solutions for improved patient care. The future of healthcare has arrived.

Although Slow to the Cloud, Practicing Physicians Embrace Mobile Healthcare is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

The survey was conducted by Wakefield Research and found that 51% of Americans have experienced a computer crash leading to them loosing all of their digital files.

More than one-third admitted they had never backed up their computers or haven’t done so in the last twelve months.

A staggering 40% of Americans admitted that they would have no way of recovering, recreating or repurchasing such data.

“It is interesting to contrast the way people insure their treasured possessions, like their home and their car, with the ways in which they leave often-irreplaceable digital assets unprotected. Most have experienced at least one major disaster, yet are still not taking simple steps to protect the contents of their computer” David Friend, CEO of Carbonite.

The most common files to be stored by Americans are photos and music. Fifty- five percent of those surveyed stored photos and 46% stored music.

Eighty-two percent of people keep only electronic files on their personal hard drive with the majority of these keeping files nowhere else.

Putting a value on digital data is often difficult but the survey made some interesting comparisons. For instance 50% of Americans would rather loose an entire year of vacation time than loose all of the files on their computer. Thirty-four percent would rather give up wine and beer for a year. Thirty-eight percent would rather loose their wedding ring. Sixty-two percent would pay as much as $500 to retrieve their documents and files while 27% said that they would pay whatever it took.

What Are Your Digital Assets Worth To You? is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

However many who have indulged have found the compatibility limited. Messages appear to the tune of ‘this format is not supported’ when certain files are uploaded.

There always appears to be a catch when someone is advertising an ‘unlimited service.’ A parallel in the physical world can be drawn with the Autobahn in Germany where speed is actually restricted via a vehicle top. Providing unlimited amounts of storage is simply not commercially viable and it is difficult to see at the moment how it can be.

Mozy who have been offering consumer backup since 2006 ended their unlimited backup offering back in February. Their original idea was that the ‘power users’ would be balanced out by those that only used up a minimal amount of space. This was an ambitious business model for $4.99/Month. Even with approximately 10% of Mozy users identified as ‘power users’ this was still never going to be commercially viable.

Competitiveness within the techy world has often pushed the boundaries to where the word ‘unlimited’ has been banded around. In the U.S. Virgin media have been forced to put a throttle on their unlimited mobile usage plan. The same also happened earlier this year with the provider Verizon.

The dream of unlimited online storage is still yet to be reached and users must be aware when opting for such services.

Is Unlimited Storage a Realistic Promise? is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

‘Wordpress is used by over 14% of the world’s top websites, yet we found that companies were not backing up their websites effectively.’ said Ritchie Fiddes, Executive Vice President Sales & Marketing of Backup Technology.

Building on the previous version which backed up settings, pages, posts and comments, users can now also back up media, attachments, themes and plugins.  It works by initially conducting a full backup of the site and thereafter periodically searching and updating any changed files.  Furthermore, the user interface has been simplified and it is now possible to track a site’s full backup history.  As before, all backups are fully compressed and encrypted and multiple WordPress sites can now be backed up to a single backup account.

“The growing concern amongst internet users over online security has meant that this is certainly a much needed free service.  With more than 21,000 downloads of version 1, we believe that the new features and increased storage will be even more popular’ said Fiddes.

Blogging is a big business with Technorati logging 133 billion blogs since 2002.  However, the majority of sites are left unprotected because the sites are only as safe as their web host.  86% of today’s active bloggers have been blogging for over a year and for all the time and financial investment, only a small percentage of these blogs are actually backed up.

To obtain your free plugin with 100 MB of free space visit http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wponlinebackup/

For press enquiries, please contact:

Sabrina Johnson, Marketing & PR Executive

Tel: 0113 827 2113 Email: sabrina@backup-technology.co.uk

Editor’s Notes

About Backup Technology
Backup Technology Limited is one of the world’s leading providers of fully managed online backup and disaster recovery solutions. With offices in both Leeds, UK and Houston, US, Backup Technology protect over 6 Petabytes of data for companies with data sizes between 50GB and over 100TB in their European and US data centres.  Working with clients across all industry sectors, Backup Technology’s impressive portfolio of customers includes LK Bennett, The British Red Cross, Liverpool Football Club, The Government Offices, Cheshire Police, Lloyds Register and Masterlock.

Find us on Twitter @backuptech or online at: www.backup-technology.com

Backup Technology Launches V2.0 of Free Online Backup for WordPress Plugin is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

While many service providers offer data backup options, very few offer archiving facilities. Most often than not, the enterprise has to manually determine whether data backed up is ready for archiving and, additionally, how to move it to other media for safe keeping. The majority of backup service providers will not facilitate the enterprise in these activities, as they do not have the wherewithal to do so.

Although some backup providers offer different tiers of storage to archive backup data; they often do not provide any services for archiving live data. Customers may select two separate providers to provide backup and archiving solutions but this is a very risky approach due to the potential gaps in data protection that can occur. Backup and archiving are completely separate functions, but are entirely reliant on each other.

Let us take a look at some real life examples of how Backup Technology have implemented email archiving and file archiving solutions alongside their backup services.

If we use an example where a customer keeps a backup of all changes to files, databases and emails in the last 90 days, they might then choose an archiving rule that archives (or stubs) large files and email attachments after those 90 days to increase server efficiency and assist with e-discovery.

To summarise:

1. The backup solution protects the live data for 90 days
2. The backup solution is also configured to backup the archiving server so that this can be fully recovered if a failure occurs
3. After 90 days the archiver stubs large files and email attachments and moves them to the archive server where it stores them for 7 years
4. It is essential that the retention rules of the backup solution and the archiver dovetail seamlessly so that no data is lost or compromised.
5. The backup solution should now backup the archive stubs on the live servers to ensure that if a Bare Metal Restore of a server is required then these links are preserved.
6. The retention rules of the backup solution should begin to remove the now archived content from the offsite backup vault after a set number of days
7. Tiered storage in the archiving solution can then be utilised to manage the lifecycle of data over time
8. Most importantly, Disaster Recovery tests should be performed to replicate a total loss of file servers, email servers, the archive solution and also the backup solution.
9. If you can not fully recover your file and email servers including the operating systems, live data less than 90 days old and stubbed files over 90 days old from your archive repository then you have major problems.

As you can hopefully see from the steps above, to co ordinate these actions with two separate service providers would be both difficult and time consuming which could seriously impact your Recovery Time Objectives.

It could also lead to many grey areas of which provider was responsible for each elemement of the recovery process, especially where a backup provider was responsible for recovering an archiving solution that it had not implemented and had little or no knowledge of.

From the customers perspective it is far simpler and more cost effective to purchase a backup and archiving solution from the same provider. Herein lies the challenge, I am yet to find a backup solution that is equally as good at archiving live data, and vice versa.

Therefore as a service provider Backup Technology provide our customers with the market leading Asigra backup solution and the Mimosa File and Email archiving system.

Although these are two completely separate solutions, it is our responsibility to combine our knowledge of our customers networks and requirements, with our expetise in Asigra and Mimosa to deliver a coherent seamless solution

File and Email Archiving and its Role in Backup is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.

The article details that data protection is about making data available when it is required and the version of the data required should be available to restore. This broken down into five key phases:

Detection: When a user notices a file is deleted, lost or corrupt, no matter what period of time has past.
Diagnosis: This is when the user must decide what version of the file to restore back when it was still consistent and error-free. This will depend on the company’s backup policy and retention period.

Restoration: This is when the file/folder/database is physically restored, but it is by no means the end of the process. Depending on the accident, before normal operations can be resumed, a restart of all applications, replay logs from a database, or from a journal for a file system might be required. This ensures data loss and down time is kept to bare minimum.

Test and Verification: All of the above is pointless if the file has not been tested and verified that it is correct and working how the user wants. It is only once this stage has been successfully completed that the data recovery process can be signed off.

With a reliable online backup solution in place, that is fully managed, backups can be monitored around the clock. Then, help is on hand when required to help with the recovery and by seeking the correct advice, file retention can ensure that the version of the file you want is available when required.

Data Backup – Its more about recovery is a post from Backup Technology's Blog. Contact us today for further information on our Online Backup and Business Continuity services.