Monday, September 26, 2011

Retrieve your lost data with business continuity disaster recovery services

The key to success in today’s competitive market for any business house is its business continuity. At the same time, it is a well-known fact that every business has a chance to witness disasters and setbacks of various kinds. In order to ensure the smooth functioning of an organization in this competitive era it is essential invest in an effective business continuity disaster recovery plan, that will help you in retrieving back all kinds of lost information and also protect you from unwarranted losses.

Companies dealing in business continuity disaster recovery services offers their customers security from natural and accidental mishaps such as loss of important data unknowingly or any kind of a system failure on a huge scale. The plan offered by the service providers enable any user to restore the integrity of the software, hardware and the inputs and helps to resume operations faster. At the same time, it brings down the chance of damaging your company’s reputation and goodwill. The business recovery plans are customized in accord with the individual business need and environment.

With these services, you and your company are well equipped to respond in a non-chaotic, organized and systematic manner to any unforeseen data crisis that might result from a third party intrusion. Since the services can be personalized, your investment depends on your business requirement or crisis that you have encountered.

Sometime back, a Symantec report on Disaster Recovery Research in the year 2009 highlights that disaster recovery services are becoming a competitive differentiator. It is an integral part of any successful enterprise aiming to attain greater revenues as well as generate maximum customer good will. Few other benefits of the plan are listed below-

* Protect against potential threats
* Minimize disruption and operational losses
* Manage the recovery operation in an organized and effective manner
* Restore and build back confidence of investors, stakeholders and customers
* Manage brand image and reputation
* Survival

Another aspect of successful business continuity today is data backups. For instance, if your CEO’s laptop or computing device crashes then all his crucial information will be lost. He might have to conduct a seminar or attend a business development meeting where he might need that lost data. In order to retrieve it back quickly and efficiently you need to resort to innovative data backup and recovery services. They help in keeping a back up of about 60 percent of the crucial information that is saved in servers and databases.

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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Disaster Recovery Services - Data Protection Challenges

Data is as vital to an organisation as is its human resource. With data growing exponentially and distributed across servers, desktops and laptops located across geography and globalization adding to this unprecedented data growth, safeguarding this important component of business houses is of outmost concern for the IT people. The struggle is to make data easily accessible to the employees and partners while preventing data loss and maintaining business continuity. Data backup is one of the most common and best ways to protect yourself against loss of data. Backup is the process of duplicating and preserving files and databases for use in case of any accidental or intentional deletion.
Data loss may result from intentional actions or from unexpected reasons such as virus, application problems and human errors or OS failure and is often sharply felt in terms of cost and effort. A storage media is the first thing on the mind when we refer to data backup. But in case of any data loss the storage media should be one from where the data recovery becomes an easy process as it is also vital for the continuity of business. Hence data backup and recovery service is an important aspect of the disaster recovery, business process recovery and IT system strategies of any business organisation. data backup and recovery service is dependent on many factors such as the type of backup media deployed, online or offline backup, number of backups maintained and the location of backup media and its accessibility.
For today’s technology oriented businesses, continuity gets highly affected due to the smallest disruption in the IT machinery. Thus an effective disaster recovery service should be put in place while planning the IT business strategy. Research has shown that a well-developed disaster-recovery service forms the backbone for data backup and recovery service ensuring business continuity for the organization. A smart way to maintain data back up is by making use of the technology.
Data encryption is a part of the online data backup process. The all-important data is compressed, encrypted and stored in a secure remote location. The compression of data leads to less backup storage space and lower bandwidth for transfer. This online service with an automated and pre-defined backup frequency and retention period makes use of a de-duplication technology, which only adds on the changed data. With a secure Internet connection, even the small and medium enterprises can also use the cloud security solutions as a data backup and recovery service.
There are many managed service providers , providing cloud based disaster recovery service having dedicated servers in India. The services provided by them are cost effective; eliminate the need for physical maintenance and recovery in case of disaster. It also eliminate the need for multiple backup processes for different locations by providing single data storage across geographical boundaries. Automated data backup system eliminates errors, data loss besides saving on the effort, time and manpower involved in recovery and rebuilding of data in case of any disasters. Besides providing access to data from any location, it also facilitates the workers to collaborate projects and documents in real-time mode.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

IaaS and Data Protection

Businesses constantly have to tackle issues related to unprecedented data growth. IT teams across such enterprises end up struggling with the availability and security of such data, even with tight IT budgets. Because of the tremendous unreliability and the enormous processes involved in traditional tape-based backup, IT teams have been forced to rely on time-consuming, manual and error-prone processes to protect their data. With growing demands on most IT businesses, the pressure to meet all the challenges of scalability, data protection and management has been felt by all IT heads. Businesses are looking at solutions that are basically economical approaches to deal with such resource crunches and data protection issues. The idea is to reduce IT administration costs as well as decrease the complexity of data protection procedures.

With the availability of new cloud computing services such as Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS), IT firms can expect the best data protection services. In fact, research firm Gartner has predicted a robust growth for the IaaS market. From $3.7 billion this year, the numbers will see a steady rise to around $10.5 billion by 2014. Cost savings will be the key attraction to employ IaaS across IT firms. Typically, the IaaS service vendor owns the equipment and is responsible for its maintenance. Cloud computing providers offer a variety of services from desktop virtualization services to network and computation and even data protection services. Generally offered on a "pay-as-you-go" basis, companies can take advantage from these services since they may offer economical solutions. IaaS services offer the best infrastructure, greater market opportunities and better economical efficiencies.

The IaaS infrastructure can provide storage and protection services since it is deployed in the cloud. IT firms can also therefore respond to growing operational demands quickly with virtual machines. The cloud also allows firms to put in place a governance framework wherein they can put in place controls to disallow unauthorized access. But IT firms should also seek only Infrastructure as a Service vendors that offer ways to streamline the process of deployment and management of unified yet flexible infrastructure that offers maximum data protection.

Like with any new technology, IaaS also faces risks as it provides new opportunities and economical technology. So while it may meet certain requirements, it certainly may require IT firms to pursue such solutions with some amount of caution, especially when it concerns moving sensitive data and applications to an emerging IaaS system.

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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

How to choose cloud computing providers

Almost every day there are new and innovative products and technologies that are being developed. Earlier all the data was held by mainframes, then later companies got servers to hold all the information, and now it is cloud computing that is the latest in computer storage. With cloud computing information can be accessed from anywhere. Cloud computing means that all the data is stored online and the access points for this data are the clouds. A provider is necessary to give you the cyber storage space for your data. The provider ensures the safety of the data and also takes care of the infrastructure that holds it. A user who has access to a cloud connection can obtain the data from anywhere as long as they have an Internet access.

Cloud computing services are highly beneficial as the user saves money by not having to pay for the upkeep of the infrastructure, and the provider can spread out the cost through all the users. It is necessary make a good choice of a provider in order to get the best advantage of cloud computing. There are three types of services to choose from

  • SaaS or Software as a Service
In SaaS users can access the entire program through the cloud. There is no necessity pay for the license or take care of the upkeep. The users are given a password and connected to the program through the cloud.

In Iaas, instead of installing and having to do your own maintenance on the infrastructure, you can rent it at a lower price and then build your solution on the piece that you are renting.
  • PaaS or Platform as a Service
Very similar to Iaas, Pass allows you to rent the platform and not the hardware. There is no need to take care of the computers as it is maintained by the cloud owner.

Choosing a cloud computing provider
There are various elements to consider when choosing a cloud provider. The cloud computing provider with dedicated hosting services should be able to understand the needs of the business and what the business is trying to accomplish. It is also necessary to check on references and check on their security measures. Some of the other elements include

Administration
Before choosing a provider it is essential to get a standard level agreement or SLA. It is only with that your provider can take care of the systems, software or other crucial data.

Customer support
A cloud computing provider must provide adequate customer support. The details of the contract need to be specified in the SLA.

Billing
It is also essential to keep a track of the services that are being used and how much is being charged for it. With a detailed bill, you will have an idea of your usage as well as the charges.

With a large number of service providers, it is vital to do your homework and check out the potential provider’s background, finances, customer service record, security, software requirements. These details can help you decide on which cloud computing provider suits your organizations needs best.


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