e-ternity Business Continuity Consultants

Demystifying Cloud Series: How is the ROI of my business affected by cloud backup?

admin — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:13:53 +0000

This blog article was originally posted by Asigra. Read the original article here.

Cloud backup offers you a cost savings solution to lower costs while managing your operating expenses. All businesses can be more cost effective and manage their assets better as a result of utilizing cloudbackup. Below are just some of the costs that can be reduced as a result of using the cloud:

IT Staffing: Less IT staff is needed to maintain your backup and recovery solution if you are utilizing the cloud backup services offered by a Service Provider or your trusted IT consultant. Enabling your IT team to focus on more strategic initiatives and also concentrate on providing proactive corporate assistance.
Cost of Ownership: You do not have to invest in new infrastructure or license new software if backup and recovery is outsourced to a trusted it consultant or managed service provider. Your investment costs are lower as a result.
Utilities: Since your data is stored in your service provider or trusted IT consultant’s vault which is outsourced you are not incurring additional hardware and infrastructure required therefore the amount of utilities used is reduced as well as your overall costs. Your company’s carbon footprint is reduced.

Another aspect of increasing your ROI is increasing your revenue on your initial investment. Cloud backup can also help your business improve its bottom line. It allows you to increase three areas of your business:

Productivity – Since backup and recovery is outsourced, staff can be reallocated to focus on their primary job responsibilities allowing for a high rate of job productivity from them.

Recoverability – In the event of a business outage or data loss event, you can recover your data faster and easier with an automated solution like cloud backup as you no longer have to find the tapes or wait for tapes to be delivered that were stored offsite. Also if you are using a solution powered by Asigra you are provided with recovery assurance that can meet your recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives. Enabling your business is able to resume to maximum efficiency sooner ensuring that productivity is restored ASAP eliminating excess time and money spent on recovering data.

Increased Margin – By making more use of the same resources/investments, companies are able to improve their economies of scale (supply vs. demand) leading to an increase in sales. As the importance and value of corporate data grows, it is important to have a backup and recovery strategy that is cost effective and improves the ROI of your business.

Asigra provides several solutions that allow you to keep costs low and provides you with a safe and effective backup solution for your present and future requirements. Read How to Future-Proof Data Backup and Recovery to learn more about how Asigra can help you.

About the Demystifying Cloud Series: As a recent hire of Asigra, Heather Peters, Marketing Communications Coordinator is attempting to research and wrap her head around the terms and acronyms surrounding cloud computing. Tune in monthly to our blog, The Cloud Backup Blog, and corporate newsletter to follow her series and learnings.

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Lessons from the Super Bowl about Business Continuity Planning

Andrew Lee — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:54:11 +0000

What could we possibly learn from the Super Bowl about Business Continuity Planning? Well, as it turns out, a lot. Often people think of business continuity and/or disaster recovery planning as insurance. But if the organizers of the Super Bowl had invested in a little business continuity planning, the embarrassing 34 minute power outage, and the scrambling by the TV network to find something to show and talk about, would have been avoided.

108 million people tuned into last weekend’s Super Bowl, making it the third most watched broadcast of all time, so when half the stadium went dark, it was a big problem. During a broadcast like the Super Bowl, every minute costs advertisers millions of dollars for a 30 second time slot, in return viewers expect to be exposed to a constant stream of entertainment. There is a huge economic loss associated with this type of blackout, and below I will outline a few observations and review the results of this blackout. If the Super Bowl isn’t immune to disaster, consider how your own company or business may be exposed to potential risk.

To set the scale of viewership, in the United States alone, out of the top 44 most watched television broadcasts in history, 21 are Super Bowls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts. This year, advertisers on average had to pay 4 million dollars for 30 seconds of airtime, and the reason is simple: only the elite brands advertise during the Super Bowl, and commercials are infamous for being hysterical and trend setting (For a recap of the top 10 Super Bowl ads of 2013 visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qy8v1ghy38. Some viewers only tune into the broadcast to watch the commercials or half time performance and companies realize that it is the perfect stage to position their brand. From an advertising perspective, they want their viewers to be typical football fans (excited and half drunk), not frustrated with technical difficulties.

So what’s the big deal, a little delay in the Super Bowl means more revenues for local pubs and bars. Well the 34-minute power outage during the Super Bowl is a disaster scenario for any type of business, organization, or agency. From a business continuity and disaster recovery perspective, someone dropped the ball…big time.

According to TSN, the Super Bowl outage was traced to a fault in a prevention device called a relay, (http://www.tsn.ca/nfl/story/?id=415527). With any disaster, it is hard to quantify the damage done to a company’s brand until months or years have passed, but when a hiccup like this happens, it makes you question the trust in repeated business. After such a large delay, the NFL might question the facility as being a suitable host for future Super Bowls which comes at a huge economic loss for New Orleans.

Interestingly, on the flip side some advertisers saw the delay as an opportunity and spun the blackout in their favor:

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3903-6-Twitter-Marketing-Lessons-from-the-Super-Bowl-Blackout. The blackout shifted viewer’s focus from the broadcast to social media. Twitter’s traffic volume reached 231,500 tweets per minute during the blackout. I would call this a win for Twitter and advertisers who seized the opportunity for free exposure, but a fail for the Super Bowl broadcast.

What should we learn from this? If you’re operating a business, the Super Bowl blackout is similar to experiencing downtime for whatever reason. For any business in any industry, downtime can result in bad publicity and unpredictable results. Do you have a proper plan to follow, or do you want to roll the dice with a catastrophically slow recovery?

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Choosing a Cloud Backup Service: Top 5 Things to Consider

Greg Onoprijenko — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 20:32:39 +0000

2012 was an amazing growth year for cloud computing services. Only a few short years ago analysts were struggling to predict cloud computing adoption trends. Actual growth percentages vary, but almost everyone agrees that cloud services are being embraced faster than anyone predicted. Leading the adoption of cloud computing services is cloud backup.

A cloud data backup service offers many benefits including a) getting data offsite for disaster recovery purposes b) eliminating large capital expenditures for the purchase of the solution, and c) reducing the burden on your existing staff to implement and manage complex technology. Most importantly, a proper cloud backup service can dramatically improve your organization’s ability to restore data during a severe outage.

Cloud backup services are not brand new, but the explosion of service providers in the last few years has made choosing the right service for your business a more difficult exercise. To assist you with your evaluation, I suggest using the following list of criteria when making your decision.

Here are my Top 5 Things to Consider When Choosing a Cloud Backup Service:

1. Successful Restore Test: Does your service provider provide you with the ability to test their service before you commit?
Seeing the service work as advertised is a must. A lot of service providers backup the data just fine; just don’t ask them to restore it. You’ll be left woefully disappointed. Make sure that before you get locked into any payments, they prove to you that your data was backed up properly, and that it can be restored on demand. In this case, seeing is believing. Don’t wait until it’s too late to learn this lesson.
1. 2. Customer References: Do they actually have happy customers?
- Before you agree to let someone guard your critical data, ask to speak to someone who has experienced their service. If they can’t provide you with references, be very worried. Once you do speak to a customer, ask them about their service experience, about the last time they needed data to be restored, and about any hidden fees that may sneak up. It’s worth the 10 minute phone call. Trust me.
1. 3. Proven Data Security: How will you know that your data will not get hacked?
- Every week you hear another horror story about a company losing their customer data. Confidential information is compromised. You’re about to trust someone else with the protection of your critical data. You need to understand how they’re going to keep your data secure and equally as important, what happens in the event that the data does fall into the wrong hands. Find out ahead of time. Don’t wait until you hear about your information getting stolen while listening to the local news.
1. 4. Proven Technology: What are the products that power the service, and are they proven?
- There are a lot of different backup software products out there. Some of them are reliable, and some of them are not. Just because a well-recognized product from a big brand vendor performs well as an on-premise data backup solution does NOT mean it performs well as a cloud service. Understand the software platform that powers the service, ask questions about the hardware infrastructure so ensure that it is fault tolerant, and ask questions about the data centre where the solution resides. Many service providers cut corners on technology and real estate to protect their profit margin, but you’ll end up paying the price in the end.
1. 5. Communication: Does your service provider respond to you promptly and more importantly, do they communicate proactively with you?
- Here’s a typical scenario: A customer signs up for a cloud backup service. For the first few weeks, both companies work together while the service gets installed. Once things are up and running, communication stops, the invoices keep arriving every month, but no one bothers to call to see how you’re doing. Ongoing communication is critical. Not only should the service provider respond promptly to support requests, they should be communicating regularly regarding backup reports, suggested retention policy changes, customer satisfaction surveys to ensure they are performing to your expectations, etc. Your business is constantly changing, so your service provider should be in tune with your ongoing requirements at all times. Make them earn their pay.

Put a little extra work up front in your evaluation to make sure the relationship is going to work long term. Your company deserves it.

What other points are important to you? We’d love to get your feedback.

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Cloud Data Backup Efficiencies

Guy Netaneli — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:59:06 +0000

Data Backup and Recovery accuracy and efficiency are some of the biggest challenges that organizations face when it comes to protecting their data.

Data backup processes must successfully finish in short backup windows, their impact on production system’s performance has to be minimal, the backed up data must reside in a secure remote location and when disaster strikes the data must be fully recovered very quickly.

This is where the leading Cloud Backup managed service providers have focused their attention in the past few years: To deliver unprecedented efficiencies to the data being captured, consumed, stored and transmitted over the network using the following methods:

Disk Based Incremental Forever Backups – The technology behind most leading cloud backup providers is designed to deliver incremental forever backups. This unique feature is due to disk based backups design that replaced the obsolete tape backup methods, saving valuable backup and recovery time. This feature also ensures that during backups, only the block level data changes are backed up, reducing the amount of data sent over the WAN.
De-duplication – Most cloud backup technologies support customer on premise de-duplication at Local Area Network (LAN) as well as global de-duplication (also known as Common File Elimination) across all protected sites. The software identifies duplicate data by looking for the same data queued for backup more than once. All data is compared based on its content, so it does not matter if the files are located on different servers or have different names.
Data compression – A cloud backup service must be able to compress the data before WAN transmission, in order to reduce the amount of traffic across the network. The compression ratio achieved with data compression is dependent on data type, so usually databases achieve higher compression ratios to image or audio files. The cloud backup software should be able to identify files that are already compressed, because further compression usually does not achieve significant improvement but it may prolong the backup times unnecessarily.
Local Storage – A cloud backup technology must include a local storage feature, which is an additional copy of the backed up data located at the customer site. The purpose of this local repository is to allow local restores when possible, thus reducing the time it takes to recover customer data.
Bandwidth Throttling – Cloud backup software is supposed to be sufficiently flexible to allow bandwidth throttling to maintain quality of service for the customers’ production applications. The software should be agile enough to support different bandwidth policies for upload or download and at different schedules, such as different days of the week and hours in a day.

The combination of de-duplication of data, continuous deltas, compression and local storage changes the economics of protecting data in businesses favor. Organizations can reduce the amount of WAN bandwidth utilized, minimizing operational costs and reduce the amount of storage capacity required to maintain a backup/recovery service. The cloud backup offering ensures not just a one-time cost saving, but an ongoing return in both hard costs and unparalleled service quality.

What other advantages to cloud data backup have you found?

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Flu Season is Nothing To Sneeze At: Having A Business Continuity Plan Can Make All the Difference

Anthony Coxall — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:59:09 +0000

With the Center for Disease Control issuing an important health warning, this year’s flu season is off to an early start and doctors are concerned that the flu strain could be serious.

Unlike natural disasters, where any disruption to business service provision is likely to be hardware-related, disruption to business operations in the event of a pandemic is mainly human-resource oriented. Individual employers must consider their workforces and their particular circumstances.

However, most should plan for up to 50% staff absences for periods of about two weeks at the height of a severe pandemic wave, and lower levels of staff absence for a few weeks either side of the peak. Overall, a pandemic wave may last about 8 weeks.

Practical and common sense measures, such as frequent hand washing, covering your mouth and nose while sneezing or coughing, and encouraging employees to stay at home if they have flu-like symptoms, may be important to help prevent the spread of the virus. Respiratory viruses such as those that cause flu are highly contagious and can survive for two days on skin, furniture, doorknobs and other hard surfaces.

HOW TO MANAGE FLU OUTBREAKS

So to mitigate your organization’s risk of a flu pandemic you might want to invoke some flu prevention controls such as:

Practice social distancing for example;
Cancel events that include a large number people in a confined area or close your facility. Or you could restrict access to certain sites or areas of your facility;
No hand shaking;
Increase daily cleaning of high traffic area i.e. Reception, elevators, hand rails, restrooms areas, etc;
No face-to-face contact in groups internal to your organization.

Communications

Effective communication is perhaps the most important component of a successful pandemic response plan. You must communicate both inside and outside your organization—with employees; local, regional, federal and international public health authorities; and your key business resources, including suppliers, customers, transportation carriers and contractors.

Communicating the progress and the detail of your response plan is crucial. Don’t wait until your plan is finalized before you begin your communication program. It should begin with the formation of the steering committee and remain active throughout the planning process. And the communication should not be one-way; you must invite questions and feedback about your preparations. This will give your employees, suppliers, customers and your community assurance that you are addressing the potential of an influenza pandemic.

Some suggestions:

Establish an intranet site dedicated to pandemic planning with links to important sites, such as the regional, provincial, national websites and local health boards.
Provide a toll-free crisis hotline for ongoing information updates
Establish an email database to send information and receive feedback
Develop signs and posters to be posted on company bulletin boards

Your communications should balance the media’s intense, often emotionally fraught information

Prepare For Unexpected Absences

As an organization you must be prepared for employees not wanting to be in the office in the event of a flu pandemic. It is incumbent that your organization prepare what I call shadow polices to accompany your current policies regarding employee absenteeism. This policy establishes a set of practices that may be brought into effect in the event of a pandemic. These shadow policies will allow for special measures to facilitate your response plan and risk management while protecting your employees, clients, and the public.

For example, a company may have a policy around employee safety; he or she refers to the employee manual stating the following:

Three Rights of Employees

The Code provides three rights:

Right to Know;
Right to Participate;
Right to Refuse.

Right to Know: Employees have the right to be informed of known or foreseeable hazards such as pandemic influenza. They must be given the information, instruction, training and supervision necessary to protect their health and safety. Effective communication will be crucial in preparing for and controlling pandemic influenza.

Right to Participate: Employees have the right and responsibility to identify and correct job-related health and safety issues. They could exercise this right during pandemic influenza. Employees can also participate through a complaint process and may complain if pandemic influenza has not been well handled.

Right to Refuse: Employees can refuse work where there is reasonable cause to believe:

• A dangerous condition exists;

• An activity constitutes a danger to one or more employees.

It is possible that employees may refuse work when pandemic influenza poses a danger.

Shadow Policy

An organization should decide ahead of time what to do if any employee decides to exercise his or her rights not to work because they don’t feel safe in their work environment. Options include:

Are they going to be paid even if the employee doesn’t work
Will the organization allow the employee to use sick or vacation time instead of performing the day-to-day tasks.
Leave of absence without pay.
Face suspension.

Planning ahead is always the best course of action. A Business Continuity Plan can address these issues, and ensure your business stays productive and profitable, regardless of any type of potential business disruption.

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Faster Internet = More Cloud

Andrew Lee — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:47:25 +0000

When meeting with new companies, Internet speed is always a concern and a limitation to cloud adoption. A few times, I have made the mistake of allowing a potential client to get excited about how all of their pain points will be cured by our cloud prescription, only to find out that their companies’ Internet speed is too slow to even send incremental nightly backups. The new LTE (Long Term Evolution) network will open up more doors for increased cloud use in both personal and enterprise applications.

Canadians have an average broadband download rate of 11.3 Mbps, while LTE can achieve theoretical download speeds of up to 150 Mbps to Mobile Devices. These speeds create a huge opportunity to access information from the cloud at the blink of an eye. Anyone who uses a CRM on a daily basis has experienced what I call the “Starbucks Lag”, referring to the loading delay caused by too many people on a WIFI network. With speeds that LTE provides, the user will not be able to tell the difference between files accessed locally, or from the cloud. For example, with LTE you can download a 2 hour movie within a few minutes, and download an MP3 in just seconds.

I have the iPhone 5, and have always been a huge fan of the Skype application for both PC and iPhone. For less than $5 a month, I get unlimited North American calls to phone lines. With the new LTE network, I am tempted to get rid of my voice plan completely. When comparing the Skype and Phone applications on the iPhone, the dial pads look identical, so why not just run all of my outgoing calls through my data package? I work in Business Development and have a hybrid meeting model between remote and on site, so I use the GoTo Meeting App religiously. I have noticed that with the new LTE speeds, I have confidence that GoTo meetings and conference bridges will run seamlessly during and travel time will not affect my productivity.

One of the coolest innovations I have seen was on the new Verizon commercial, demonstrating how cloud computing can save lives. (http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7wsp/verizon-powerful-answers-firefighters) In summary, they have leveraged cloud technologies and designed a protective display for firefighters to wear, which gives them vision in any circumstance.

As more data is stored in the cloud, the hardware costs for computers and devices will go down, making information more accessible for developing countries. We have seen this in India with the Aakash, a $35 dollar tablet running on android designed to connect link 25,000 collages and 400 universities in an e-learning program. (http://tech2.in.com/features/tablets/aakash-2-indias-low-cost-tablet-dream-come-true/656122) The speed with which these technologies are improving is exponential, so when I think forward 10 years from now, I imagine the day where we will access everything from the cloud, including a cell phone’s operating system. Who knows, maybe someday cell phone devices become carrier agnostic. Instead of buying a Rogers iPhone with iOS preloaded, maybe we will just be buying a low cost screen that streams everything. At that point, all you have to do is purchase the licenses for whichever OS you want from Apple, Android, or heck, maybe even give the new BB10 a shot.

Overall, I am excited to see the future of how we access applications as Internet and wireless speeds increase. My predictions might be a bit far-fetched, but I still remember my sister yelling at me because our dial up Internet connection was blocking the phone line…and that was only 10 years ago.

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6 things I think I think for IaaS in 2013

admin — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:36:09 +0000

By John Cowan, CEO and Co-Founder, 6Fusion

Another year, another dollar… or something like that. It’s time for an update on the 6 things I think I think for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) in the coming year!

1. Hybrid Cloud Computing

2012 Perspective: Hybridization WAS key in 2011 and I’m doubling down in 2012. If you’ve paid attention to the consolidation in the industry, you’d best do the same. The big boys are snapping up anything that smells like bridging the enterprise to the multi-tenant host. Look for this trend to intensify.

2013 Perspective: VMware buys DynamicOps. Red Hat buys ManageIQ. Cisco buys Cloupia. Consider the consolidation trend intensified. The big question for 2013 is what the big boys have in mind for the cool technologies they’ve acquired in 2012. Whatever they might have in mind, the signal from the customer is clear. Hybrid cloud computing is considered critically important to wide-scale adoption of cloud computing in general. As I highlighted earlier this year, as big as the cloud computing market is becoming it still pales in comparison to private IT operations. Hybrid cloud computing is correctly viewed as a technology tap to this underlying market.

2. Cloud Federation & Interoperability

2012 Perspective: I’ve spoken with some pretty big names in the business and scale is an issue with their regional plays in the market. The challenge in 2011 for cloud federation was the degree of difficulty associated with interoperability. There was much progress on this front in 2011 but I think before broad based federation goes from concept to reality there needs to be more plumbing. 2012 will be the year real interoperability tracks are laid as a foundation for scalable cloud federation.

2013 Perspective: We as an industry had the opportunity to lay down tracks for real cloud federation and interoperability at this time last year. What happened was rather disappointing. Basically, industry titans from OpenStack, Amazon, Citrix, and others all postured. I remember sitting in the crowd at GigaOm Structure when the first official shots were fired on the subject of API standardization. What could have been a wonderful opportunity to seize the moment and end vendor lock-in before it ever started in cloud computing, big vendors did what they do best. They opened up their respective Kimonos and bragged about the size of their case studies. What a (albeit entertaining) waste of time and opportunity.

Because we all anticipate the cloud market, particularly IaaS, growing at a serious CAGR in 2013 there will be growing customer pressure to allow the movement and billing transfer of workloads between independent cloud operators. The opportunity for a new or existing company to emerge with a solution to this problem will become significant in the coming year.

3. Cloud Ecosystem Enablement

2012 Perspective: VMware unveiled its plans to stitch together Vcloud operators at its big VMworld shindig, but this wasn’t the only giant making big bets on the cloud ecosystem concept. Equinix, one of the world’s largest data center operators, hatched is master plan for a ‘Marketplace’ of Platform Equinix Partners and Synnex, one of the most powerful IT Distributors in North America took a huge step with its Cloudsolv application and services portal. Watch what these three companies do in 2012 to drive ecosystem growth.

2013 Perspective: Dell, HP, Cisco, Arrow, Avnet, Telefonica, Singtel…just to name a few. Billions in unstructured cloud business potential spanning distribution, hardware and telecoms just waiting to be harnessed. The lure of these types of captive markets will push the envelope on cloud ecosystem enablement despite a big challenge encountered in 2012. That big challenge was the relative learning curve incurred when you cross-pollinate large singularly focused business units.

4. Emerging Cloud Communities

2012 Update: By the middle of the 2nd quarter I was beginning to worry about this prediction. Was I going a bit too far out on a limb? Then, bang! VMware announces the big deal with the NYSE. Wow. Talk about going big or going home. The NYSE community cloud has a lot of eyes on it. A large number of other vertical deals are hanging in the balance, hoping to learn what not to do when details of the NYSE project become more public. I think this VMware play will be a big success and in 2012, you will see many other big players follow suit.

2013 Perspective: Do you hear that sound? No? I didn’t think so. There’s no sound in a vacuum that is the lack of follow up from the big NYSE deal in 2011. No big pharma cloud. No big banking cloud. No big offshore financial cloud.

How come?

Would-be community cloud enablers in 2012 figured out what they needed to figure out, which they are hoping to do in 2013. What they need to figure out has nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with operational and contractual concerns. The commonality of vertical market integration resolves certain compliance risks, but it doesn’t mean private IT operators are ready, suited or even capable of offering a legitimate outbound customer service. Ask any CFO or CEO of a publically traded company about the idea of taking on the liability risk created by a new service that, oh by the way, has nothing to do with existing strategy. At a minimum in 2013 look for new corporate structures to emerge in order to facilitate offering community clouds as a service.

5. Channelization

2012 Perspective: I am still a firm believer in the channel and I’m still banking my company’s future on it. However, the Channel failed to capitalize on the cloud opportunity in 2011 the way I thought it would. Don’t get me wrong, the needle definitely moved. But the cloud operators and the broader channel are still separated by an expertise gulf that is limiting how much cloud money flows via the intermediary. The investment from the IaaS providers continues to be there. Find me one IaaS services or software provider that doesn’t showcase a channel program today. 2012 will see the gulf shrink and the channel heat up because Distribution will hit its stride and carry with it more evidence of the gold rush I saw last year.

2013 Perspective: The channel didn’t emerge as the boon of cloud computing adoption in 2012, but it continued to make significant progress. Cloud Sherpas recently raised $40M on a bet that it had figured out the model to integrate cloud into the enterprise. That’s not a small bet on the channel intermediary concept. There were other big wins in the market too.

In 2013 you will see vendors get very serious about forcing channel intermediaries to declare their allegiance. Programs are maturing and dollars are flowing inbound to support the intermediary to the customer. This is a sure sign that we are on the cusp of growing the cloud wave in a big way.

6. IaaS Futures Market

2012 Perspective: Spot market concepts made progress in 2011 but as expected were not able to truly capture the imagination of the market. However, the groundswell around commodity compute resource trading is gaining momentum. And in 2012 look for general progress in this area with a few players coming out of the woodwork to surprise some.

2013 Perspective: Fact – trading compute contracts is going to happen. If you trust nothing else I write, trust me on this.

As predicted, a few players came out of the woodwork on this. Specifically, the Eurex and Zimory (via TSystems) in Europe announced that they had formed a partnership to build a trading platform in 2013.

What is unclear is exactly how this is going to happen. How will the market be organized? Look for clarity to emerge in 2013 on this subject.

Since last year’s 6.1 bonus prediction was such a hit (um, cloud brokerage, anyone?) I will keep with the new tradition. Here’s my scoop: Keep an eye on the fall of old empires. The world economy is definitely not what it was two years ago, but neither are some of these tech titans of yesterday:

Dell

Microsoft

Oracle

Cloud Computing – the agent of change – can mean rebirth or extinction for some of the biggest companies to dominate the tech landscape in the last 30 years. Look for significant strategic moves by some of the giants as they posture for survival in the new era.

Have a great 2013!

This article appeared first 6Fusion. Read the original blog entry.

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The Cost and Ongoing Operations of Cloud Backup

admin — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:55:15 +0000

In the last of this three-part article we discuss the costs and ongoing operations of cloud backups.

Part 1 on Exploring the Cloud focused on the basics including the difference between private, public and hybrid cloud solutions. Part 2 focused on explaining security features with cloud backup.

The complete articles were originally published by Asigra.

What level of IT resources will be required to setup and maintain a cloud backup solution?

For most companies, a cloud backup and recovery solution will eliminate, or significantly reduce, IT resources related to the mundane task of backup and allow your resources to be redeployed to more strategic projects. Working with a trusted cloud backup service provider enables you to leverage your existing network infrastructure while transferring the responsibility of backup to an outside expert.

This can be even more important considering the challenges some companies are facing hiring experienced IT backup administrators for on-premise solutions especially in smaller cities or remote geographies. It also enables CIOs to focus on spearheading significant transformational projects rather than backup implementation, which typically has a lower prestige value within most organizations.

Once you determine the appropriate settings, backups are automated, creating a “set-it and-forget-it” scenario. You will however, need to ensure that your cloud backup service provider is equipped to monitor your backups to identify and correct any possible problems. The price of your backup service will reflect the amount of responsibility you maintain versus your cloud backup service provider. Low cost service offerings could mean that you will be provided with marginal support, minimal senior technical resources and the ongoing burden for monitoring and managing your backups.

How is my data stored in the cloud?

Not all data is created equal therefore your cloud backup service provider will work with you to take a comprehensive approach to reviewing, assessing and classifying your data to gain a better understanding of your business needs and your recovery time objectives for your young versus old data. Tiered recovery known as Backup Lifecycle Management or BLM is the most cost effective approach to storing data in the cloud. Your cloud backup service provider should understand that organizations don’t value older data the same as younger, more critical data. Operationally critical data requires more frequent backups with a better SLA. Less critical backups are relegated to less expensive, lower SLA standards to save costs. In most companies, more than 50% of data is older, of less value, and should cost less to protect.
Your service provider should help you to align the value of your data with the cost of protecting it.

It appears as though a monthly subscription fee for cloud backups is equivalent to implementing a traditional tape backup system. Is this true?

Comparing the cost of a cloud backup solution against an equivalent tape system can be a tricky calculation. The best way to approach the issue is to consider total cost of ownership for both systems.

To determine the total cost for a tape backup system you will need to consider:

Hardware
Software
Ongoing maintenance for both hardware and software
Initial setup costs for configuration
Time and resources for managing backup and restore, including periodic recovery drills
Future scalability and costs of additional infrastructure

For a cloud-based backup service, costs to consider include:

Recoverability assessment
Initial implementation
Pay-per-use for capacity

Your cloud backup service provider should have access to a ROI calculator that you can use to determine the cost savings over a multi-year period of a cloud backup and recovery solution as compared with an on-premise system. Many companies will discover that the total cost of ownership for a cloud backup and recovery system is significantly lower.

Along with total cost of ownership, there are other associated financial advantages of a cloud backup service including:

Lower operating and administrative costs due to automated backups
Built-in scalability which makes it easy to evolve with new business needs
Cloud backup software that scans your data for integrity or corruption issues and alerts your company immediately, preventing costly problems in advance
Deployment of IT resources in more strategic innovative initiatives that enable greater competitive advantages
Simple recovery drills for peace of mind

Why cloud backup?

These answers should provide a better picture of what the switch to a cloud backup, recovery and restore solution involves. Given the reliability, cost savings and ease of operation associated with cloud backup, many companies are now moving to the cloud. The reasons include:

Ability to leverage existing infrastructure — a cloud backup and recovery solution doesn’t require buying or installing expensive equipment as it takes advantage of your existing corporate network
Set it and forget it — once you select a backup schedule, company data is saved automatically, providing a transparent solution
Tape backup shortcomings — tape backups are often expensive, vulnerable to obsolescence and can be lost or stolen when being transported off-site
Improved recovery time objectives — by using a managed backup service, the speed and reliability of your recovery and restore will be governed through your SLA
Smarter use of IT resources — a cloud backup and recovery solution will allow your business to redirect IT resources to more pressing challenges within your organization
Backup Lifecycle Management — a cloud backup and recovery solution aligns the value of your data with the cost of protecting it. As the value of your data declines over time the cost of protecting it also declines providing you with additional cost savings.

Talk to your Service Provider about cloud backup.

The post The Cost and Ongoing Operations of Cloud Backup appeared first on e-ternity Business Continuity Consultants.

Top Cloud Computing Predictions for 2013

admin — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:21:19 +0000

1. Disaster recovery services will become more automated

2. Software-as-a-service adoption will increase

3. Portable media such as DVD and BluRay will become obsolete

4. Cloud storage will become the dominant repository for music, photos, and videos

5. Big data will make another leap in automation, with a growing percentage of the data growth on the internet created by machines, not humans!

6. IT department will be more of a vendor management and business unit conduit role vs. hands-on technical role.

The post Top Cloud Computing Predictions for 2013 appeared first on e-ternity Business Continuity Consultants.

Top Mobile Device Predictions for 2013

admin — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:18:43 +0000

1. The desktop computer will become obsolete

2. All new laptops will incorporate touch screens, blurring the lines between laptops and tablets.

3. Mobile device adoption will continue to explode

4. Increased security issues on mobile devices and BYOD security

5. Explosive growth in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies for businesses

6. The workstation will become a thin client only and all end user installation will be accessed in private or public clouds.

7. The pen and notebook will become obsolete.

8. TV’s will be replaced by computers and mobile devices

The post Top Mobile Device Predictions for 2013 appeared first on e-ternity Business Continuity Consultants.