Cloud Computing: Backup is only half of the story

June 20, 2015 Off By David

Grazed from CCI. Author: Lawrence James.

30 years ago, backing up was a costly, labour-intensive activity involving long reels of tape and even longer night shifts for data centre managers looking after all of the data backed up locally on-premise. Not only this, but it took up acres of floor space and was, without a doubt, error-prone. Despite these issues, organisations have, for many years, recognised the importance of backing up, with the “Cache is King” mantra engrained in every IT Director’s psyche.

The need to safeguard their organisation’s ever-growing pool of data and mission-critical applications against natural disasters such as fires and flooding or simple data corruption is very real. However, what many organisations have not fully appreciated yet is the way in which the backup industry is evolving. Gone are the days of tape-based backup. They are replaced, instead, with much more efficient disk-based and online backup…

To date, there have been many challenges and considerations for organisations backing up, which have caused the industry to develop apace. These include time constraints, security issues and management requirements, as well as cost and capacity from a from an opex perspective. With more focus on the constant availability of data to support their business models, organisations have also become increasingly demanding. They now increasingly look to backup with zero-capacity copies, de-dupe compression, encryption and more – demands that are rendering backup technology more and more sophisticated…

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