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Overcoming IT Challenges with Data Protection Managed Services

Published: May 22 2012, 07:23 AM | no comments
by Bennett Klein

Today, IT organizations face ever-more demanding service levels and expectations from the business side of the house. And while data continues to grow exponentially, the tough economic climate of the past 5 years has left many IT executives with fewer staff and reduced budgets. Technology like server virtualization has helped IT consolidate hardware and reduce costs, but it also leaves systems, applications and shared storage devices at higher risk. If a single virtual server with a dozen virtual machines (VMs) crashes, or if a large shared storage device fails, how many users will it affect? And what if you had a fire, flood, power outage or other disaster? Is your IT staff prepared?

“Data Protection” really means more than just backup and restore, it includes protecting the core systems and applications that the business depends on every day. In a December 2011 survey performed by Coleman Parkes Research, the majority of companies admit their data is inadequately protected and only 26% are confident enough to say they have a formal and comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place. When asked about the key barriers to better data protection and disaster recovery operations, companies pointed to inadequate training of IT personnel (reported by 62% of US organizations) and lack of budget (54%). So what can IT organizations do?

A Managed Services Provider (MSP) that offers data protection services may be the solution. With an MSP, you can quickly acquire the IT staff, expertise and infrastructure to address your evolving data protection needs, and leverage operating budgets (OPEX) instead of capital expense budgets (CAPEX). These service providers have the experience and knowledge to help you implement, manage and monitor your on-premise data protection and recovery solutions. And they can also provide you with a remote facility and staff to help you execute a DR strategy, from simply storing your data safely offsite to having a complete virtualized failover environment for business continuity. An MSP contract will include a well-defined service level agreement (SLA) to meet your specific needs, and since this type of service is delivered in an “on-demand” manner, you gain agility and flexibility as your needs or business cycles change.

If an MSP solution doesn’t sound appropriate for your organization, you should at least consider using a public cloud service like Microsoft Windows® Azure™ or Amazon Web Services (AWS) for disaster recovery—such as offsite data protection and system availability. Our survey revealed that more than half of U.S. organizations expect their use of the cloud to increase as part of their business continuity strategy over the next year.

A public cloud service makes a great solution for organizations without their own remote facilities or DR site. You might reconsider your current data protection solution if it doesn’t provide some type of cloud support.

Bottom line, if your IT organization is having a tough time meeting data protection demands on your own, an MSP offering or cloud service may be the solution.

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By: Bennett Klein
Bennett Klein is Senior Director of Product Marketing for CA Technologies where he is responsible for setting strategies for building worldwide market awareness and demand for the CA ARCserve Family of Products.
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Top 3 Considerations When Building Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Service Offerings

Published: April 12 2012, 01:58 PM | no comments
by Bennett Klein

When it comes to Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR), SMBs have similar needs as large enterprises, but a lack of IT resources, budget and experience can be overwhelming.  This presents a tremendous opportunity for MSPs to build lucrative, value-added BC/DR services-whether they use their own hosting facilities or leverage others such as a public cloud.

First, let's review the fundamentals. A DR strategy provides an organization with system, application and data recovery within an acceptable period of time, whether that's hours or even days.  A BC strategy, on the other hand, focuses an organization's ability to maintain access to IT resources after unexpected system outages, involving near-instantaneous failover to redundant resources and including continuous data protection technologies. 

#1. BC/DR is More than Backup.

Backup is the cornerstone of any data protection service, and MSPs new to this market can easily start there, but delivering BC and DR services demands far more.  There are many technologies available to help MSPs build managed and hosted services that offer customers offsite data protection, continuous data protection, near-instantaneous system recovery and even high availability.

#2. Build It or Buy It?

MSPs may find it attractive to build and control their own services data center, but they must consider the time, resources, cost and experience necessary to get one up and running.  MSPs without a hardened data center in place might leverage a public or private cloud, or even license a complete turnkey BC/DR service offering, which is an even quicker way for MSPs to engage customers.

#3. Leverage a Multi-Tier Strategy.

Customers have different BC/DR needs depending on strategies and SLAs, so MSPs should consider BC/DR services with granular levels of protection. The greater the protection and recovery speed of a given service, the higher the value to the customer.   

We recently published a whitepaper that provides more detail on how MSPs can quickly launch a recurring services revenue stream without the hassle, time and cost of building everything on their own. What's your perspective? We'd like to know.

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By: Bennett Klein
Bennett Klein is Senior Director of Product Marketing for CA Technologies where he is responsible for setting strategies for building worldwide market awareness and demand for the CA ARCserve Family of Products.
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Leveraging The Cloud For Disaster Recovery

Published: March 30 2012, 10:50 AM | 1 Comment(s)
by Bennett Klein

Using public cloud resources can provide remote facilities, staffing and resources for disaster recovery planning if you don’t have your own. It can make an IT organization more agile and flexible as they can add or remove resources and staff as needed, and typically pay only for what they use – helping maximize budgets.

The cloud offers businesses and non-profit organization a way to convert capital expenditures (CAPEX) to operational expenditures (OPEX) and helps IT better manage budgets overall, as all expenses are known in advance. But there are a variety of questions and concerns including:

• Is transferring large volumes of data and databases over the wire for offsite storage even feasible?
• How long will it take to recover that data in the case of a local system or storage crash?
• What about data security across the wire?
• What about the security of your data once it’s stored at the cloud provider’s facility?

The cloud can enable a good archiving and disaster recovery resource. It can even be a failover location for high availability of your critical applications and data for business continuity, as long as there is careful planning and the right tools are used. It may provide an IT organization with more agility and flexibility in deploying its business continuity/disaster recovery (DR) strategy and resources, while helping to reduce costs by reducing the need to purchase, deploy, manage and maintain the associated hardware and software.

The cloud may also be the perfect solution for companies that don’t have their own remote DR site or data center.  You can use it for offsite backup and long-term data storage, as a secure offsite host for continuous data protection (CDP) and even for failover servers to achieve a high-availability environment. These and other issues are being addressed on World Backup Day.

I outlined different ways you can leverage the cloud for data protection and disaster recovery in a whitepaper .  What do you think are the most important considerations and caveats? Please share your thoughts.

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By: Bennett Klein
Bennett Klein is Senior Director of Product Marketing for CA Technologies where he is responsible for setting strategies for building worldwide market awareness and demand for the CA ARCserve Family of Products.
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For MSPs, licensing structures count

Published: December 07 2011, 09:07 AM | no comments
by Michael Crest

MSPs are poised on the brink of a tremendous market opportunity. IT organizations are woefully under-resourced given the demands of the business, so they desperately need to offload “chore” tasks to MSPs in order to focus on “core” ones.

But MSPs need to do three things to succeed:

  1. Craft portfolios of service offerings that tightly align with the actual needs of their target customers
  2. Develop the right mix of best-in-class technologies to effectively and efficiently deliver those services
  3. License those technologies in ways that enable them to optimize profits while offering customers compelling value.

That third requirement is often under-appreciated. It doesn’t matter how market-savvy or technically competent an MSP is if it can’t be profitable at whatever price-point the market will bear. So MSPs have to keep their software costs rigorously aligned with how customers consume services.

If their software vendors locked them into exorbitant fixed upfront costs, money can wind up pouring out faster than it pours in. By the same token, if and when demand spikes, an MSP has to be able to quickly ramp up capacity without worrying about violating license terms.

Our new MSP 2.0 licensing program for CA ARCserve gives MSPs the flexibility they need to respond to changing customer needs. It features subscription-based per-terabyte pricing that frees MSPs from burdensome capital outlays and allows them to price their services based on their customers’ monthly utilization while maintaining a predictable margin. This is a win-win-win—for CA Technologies, our MSP partners and their customers.

Yes, cloud technology is effecting sweeping change across technology markets worldwide. But without the right licensing structures, none of us will gain its full potential business benefits.

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By: Michael Crest
Michael Crest is general manager for the Data Management customer solutions unit at CA Technologies, responsible for the team that develops, markets, sells and supports the company’s ARCserve and ERwin product lines. Michael has more than 20 years of IT industry experience specializing in direct and...
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Data Protection & Cloud Computing: It Makes Economic Sense

Published: October 24 2011, 03:16 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Chris Ross

Market analysts suggest that the eurozone's economy will not grow this quarter and that both consumer and investor confidence is weakening. Inevitably, the IT department will come under even greater scrutiny and will need to demonstrate that it is maximising efficiency and managing costs tightly.

New research we’ve just published, "Insights: Data Protection and the Cloud 2011", shows there is clear room for improvement. Despite the huge advances in data protection technologies in recent years, almost all European companies (94%) have lost data and applications in the last 12 months. Bearing in mind that data losses cost European businesses around €260,000* in lost revenue each year, I was surprised that so many companies are still falling into this trap. This is an avoidable cost if they have the right systems in place, and it’s an expensive mistake to ignore the risk. Data loss can damage reputation and customer service, and few companies can afford to shed customers in the current economy.

That’s not the only way in which businesses are vulnerable, either. The survey also revealed that Disaster Recovery (DR) is often not a priority for senior management and many companies do not have comprehensive DR plans. When resources are tight, it’s particularly important that plans are in place to cope with any adverse circumstances. Disasters do strike, and companies need to be resilient to bounce back quickly before any permanent damage is done.

Perhaps companies are scared that data protection strategies are expensive? The good news is that cloud computing is emerging as a more cost-effective solution, ideal for the current economic climate. Indeed, over a third of organisations expect cloud computing to play an increasingly important role in their business continuity plans over the next year. Using the cloud for data protection can help organisations convert CAPEX to OPEX, and enable better budget management as companies typically pay only for what they use.

Many companies are finding that the cloud can offer stability in an unstable economic environment. As a result, they can free up resources to focus on performance rather than recovery. There’s a saying that it’s easier to save a dollar than make a dollar. With the cloud, businesses have a chance to not only save money, but maybe even save the business.

For a full copy of "Insights: Data Protection and the Cloud 2011" click here.

*The Avoidable Cost of Downtime

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By: Chris Ross
Chris Ross is vice president of EMEA and Asia Pacific for the Data Management business at CA Technologies, responsible for the regional sales operations and growth of the group’s international revenues. A 14-year software industry veteran, Chris joined CA Technologies from BakBone software where he served...
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