Orlando, Florida -- Cloud-based data backup and recovery systems are an interesting option for organizations handling specific data types and situations. Here’s how you might want to include cloud technologies as part of a complete data backup and recovery plan.
A Checklist: Boost Your Data Backup and Recovery Plan
As you continue to improve your data backup and recovery plan, keep these goals in mind:
Evaluate your staff; put the right people on the right jobs.
Keep state and federal regulatory needs in mind. Can you improve your compliance best practices?
Consolidate multiple legacy backup systems into a single, easy-to-manage plan.
As always, cut costs.
To many people, the idea seems crazy: Send your company’s confidential business data off into the wild and untamed world of the Internet and let it just sit there? How could that possibly be a smart, secure way to back up and recover mission-critical information?
In reality, storing information in the Internet cloud makes perfect sense for some kinds of data. Businesses of all sizes and stripes are using cloud-based applications and services, including email, sales force automation and tasks that require raw processing power. In fact, a 2011 Microsoft study found that within three years, 43 percent of workloads in small and medium-size businesses will become paid cloud services. Data backup is among the chores that have migrated from the server in your network room to the online realm.
Why do it? As you probably know, flexibility is the key benefit of any cloud-based plan: An IT department can easily deal with exactly the services it needs, when it needs them; pay for precisely what it uses; and ditch anything that’s no longer needed. You don’t have to commit to expensive hardware purchases or crystal ball your technology demands, either. Seasonal enterprises, for example, love the cloud; cloud apps let them gear up their technology at peak periods and pull back when business slows.
Why the Cloud May Make Sense for Your Business
Today, small and medium-size businesses, as well as remote offices at larger enterprises, are looking at the possibility of integrating cloud backup and recovery services into a total data backup and recovery plan that also includes tape and disk backup. Here’s why:
A mobile workforce needs 24/7 access to backup business data. Putting some information online and within your staff’s constant reach makes them more productive.
The scalable “pay-as-you-go” model helps IT departments on a tight budget do more with less.
Cloud services support many platforms and data types. So if the IT team has been tasked with funneling information from diverse legacy systems into a single backup solution, this strategy can help.
Offloading some data backup and recovery functions to cloud-based experts can help automate the entire process. You’ll lighten IT’s workload.
The design of a cloud-based backup and recovery system provides a good reason for making one part of your data backup and recovery plan. For example, storing data remotely with a trusted cloud-storage service
partner automatically affords an offsite copy of your data—and that’s one big item off your to-do list. A good cloud solution also includes a dashboard-like interface that makes it easy to manage complex data
protection needs.
The service level agreement you forge with a cloud systems partner should provide the latest versions and upgrades of all storage, security and data transfer technology—you’ll want to stay ahead of your best in-
house efforts.
Addressing the Naysayers
Even with all these benefits, your IT staff’s main concern—security in the cloud space—may have you thinking twice. In fact, a 2011 survey of Information Systems Audit and Control Association members reports that 41 percent of respondents thought the risks of cloud computing outweighed the benefits.2 A well-managed cloud-based backup and recovery system, if monitored and tested proactively by its service provider for all potential vulnerabilities, is quite likely providing at least the same value and performance that the IT department can provide on its own.
The service provider will also provide data encryption to protect your information as it moves to the cloud and will offer deduplication technologies that decrease the storage space needed for data backup and recovery, cut the time for data transfer, and ease your network load.
With a cloud solution, there’s also the option to pass data from your systems to a cloud-based setup using local backup. This so-called Disk-to-Disk-to-Cloud (D2D2C) strategy boosts your backup’s effectiveness and also yields better performance because you’re recovering bulk data locally, a benefit if you have limited bandwidth.
Security and Regulations
If you’re in a heavily regulated industry such as healthcare, insurance or finance—categories that are subject to strict data archiving rules—cloud-based systems may work well for at least some of your data. They offer demonstrable and consistent data backup and recovery best practices, maintained by the partner and based on your rules. What’s more, broad, frequent and consistent protection can reduce your risks of noncompliance.
Cloud Caboodle Suggests:
Give the Cloud a Closer Look
Don’t just dump data in the cloud. Do some planning and solicit expert advice. Partner with a service partner touting a track record of well-maintained, secure cloud-based solutions, and integrate them into a
complete data backup and recovery plan that also includes disk and tape.
Try a pilot program. Rank data based on security needs, and test cloud-based backup on some of your less sensitive information. Given a cloud’s low startup costs, a test should easily fit into your budget.
Conduct a cost-benefit analysis comparing your current data backup and recovery scheme—and all its hardware and maintenance costs—to a similar level of service from a cloud-based service provider. Focus on
labor costs; that’s where you’ll likely find the biggest savings.
Cloud Caboodle, which specializes in virtualization, cloud storage, backup, archive, computing and related issues for data protection. We have authored of hundreds of article on the subject of Data Protection and Cloud Storage. Follow us on Twitter @cloudcaboodle. For more information contact us at (407) 494-4347 or email info@cloudcaboodle.com
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"How did we ever live without it? The Cloud of cause!
Orlando, Florida -- Let's say it's the late 1990s. Advisers are telling you you've got to get on this thing called the Internet. You need a website, to be able to send files, and for gosh sake, you have to
get email. (I wrote a column in 1997 saying exactly that!) Looking back, you'd say those advisers were right — the Internet was a fundamental shift in how business operates.
Right now, there's another major transformation taking place. It's going to change the way you do business. It's called "cloud computing," and you need to know about if you want to stay competitive. It's going to give you far more power, with fewer headaches and less cost. And it's here to stay.
First — in a nutshell, cloud computing means the delivery over the Internet - rather than from your own on-premise hardware — of computing applications, storage, power. Another term for the cloud computing most small and medium businesses (SMBs) need is SaaS — or "software as a service." Here's how the cloud changes your world. Let's say you now use a software program to track your customers and leads. You buy expensive software, host that on your own servers and computers (which need their own software). All of that needs regular maintenance and costly upgrades. If your staff grows or shrinks, you're stuck with what you bought. With cloud-based solutions, those problems basically disappear. Cloud-based solutions are delivered over the Internet, accessed through a browser, so employees can be on Macs, differing operating systems of PCs. Add employees? Up and running in minutes. Your needs change? Just reduce the number of subscriptions.
The best thing: Cloud-based solutions are typically far more powerful, yet easier to use and learn, than on-premise software. And your costs are stable and predictable. There have been big barriers, however, for SMBs in adopting cloud solutions. It's been challenging to know which solutions to choose and trust, and how to get cloud-based services to work with on-premise software or other cloud-based services. Then it's been clumsy to pull together information from those various services. The cloud is here to stay, so download a copy of my book to learn how you can harness the cloud for your business. One day, I'm sure I'll look back at this column as quaint, just as I smile as I look back on my 1997 column telling people to get email. When it comes to the cloud, we're certain to say, "How did I ever live without it?
Cloud Caboodle, which specializes in virtualization, cloud storage, backup, archive, computing and related issues for data protection. We have authored of hundreds of article on the subject of Data Protection and Cloud Storage. Follow us on Twitter @cloudcaboodle. For more information contact us at (407) 494-4347 or email info@cloudcaboodle.com
Tags: EMC, Equallogic, EVA, NetApp, HDS, HP, Dell, Data Domain, Quantum, iSCSI SAN, FC SAN, NAS, Dedupe, Netbackup, Backup Exec, VMware,Best Practices Low cost Cloup Storage, i365, Mozy, SNIA, i365, Nasuni, StorSimple, TwinStrater, Sonian, Gartner Magic Quadrant, Nirvanix, Amazon S3, EC2, Rackspace, Microsoft Windows Azure 365, Enterprise Cloud Storage, Cloud Gateway, TwinStrata, Egnyte, Mimosa, Iron Mountain, Evault, SaaS, price, cost, dedupe, disk to disk, Symantec, EnterpriseVault, NetBackup appliance, Backup Exec, Veritas, SSD, vRanger, Veeam, VMware, Hybrid, iCloud, SharePoint, Storage-as-a-Service, Commvault, Big Data, SLA, iCloud, Riverbed Whitewater, Steelhead, storage appliance, WAN, Iron Mountain, Mimosa Nearstore 2012 Symantec Backup Exec 3600