Susan, an employee of a major insurance company, clicked on her email at work to open a cute home video her friend Debbie sent. That 20mb video file was then stored in her email and, at the end of the day, was diligently backed up by her company’s data storage solution. Just one year later after daily backups of Susan’s email, that one video now takes up 7300 MB of space!
Incredible Data Growth
The incredible growth in the amount of electronic data generated for both business and personal use has resulted in higher costs for data storage and backup. Several factors have lead to these spiraling cost increases, including storage of larger files such as video and audio, multiple backups of the same files, and enforcement of industry compliance regulations. How often is your company backing up duplicate data over the course of a year?
With the exponential increase in the storage of email, video, mp3 files and other large sized files, business storage needs have grown accordingly. In addition to backing up business information, company computers often end up as the de facto backup for personal music, videos and email, resulting in additional backup storage costs for businesses.
Currently, 75% of documents are stored in email. In 2008 alone, more than 210 billion emails were sent.1 Backing up the same email attachments sent to different people in the same organization results in increased storage requirements, costs and time for backups.
The Contribution from Regulations
Government regulations such as the Gramm‐Leach‐Bliley Act, Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) and industry compliance regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) have also increasingly contributed to higher levels of data retention and stricter requirements to keep data secure and private. For example, according to HIPAA, healthcare providers must comply with the confidentiality, integrity and availability of individuals’ health information. They are also in the midst of implementing electronic medical records (EMR). While EMR may increase efficiency and lower processing costs, it will also lead to higher data storage requirements. In the financial arena, your mortgage information, credit card activities, investment information and other private financial data protected by the Gramm‐Leach‐Bliley Act add to the stricter privacy controls and data storage and backup requirements.
Grappling with Costs
As companies grapple with the rising costs and complexities of data storage and backup, a variety of options are available to reign in and more effectively manage the costs and improve efficiencies. Companies looking for ways to reduce their backup costs are increasingly turning to more modern and efficient data management solutions that utilized disk‐based technology and online backup. How much money could you be saving by implementing the right storage and backup solution? This white paper outlines 7 ways that new backup solutions can help control costs.
7 Ways to Control Costs
Using outdated backup methods or limiting your company to tape storage and backup will increase your costs, rather than reduce them. Instead, look for a solution that provides the flexibility and technology that will help you maximize cost savings. Implementing the following cost management techniques may help optimize your storage and backup strategy.
1. Reduce duplication of data
2. Implement flexible data retention policies and schedules
3. Use one system that works with multiple platforms
4. Support multiple locations or branches with a centrally managed, consistent backup solution
5. Decrease the amount of time spent managing the backup process
6. Control costs long term by choosing a vendor that can scale with your business
7. Consider outsourcing the entire management process.
How One Company Met the Challenge of Data Growth
One e‐commerce management company recently faced several data storage challenges that were driving up costs. With new clients coming on board, leading to immediate increases in data storage, as well as multiple databases that needed daily backup, the company’s old tape backup system was no longer cost‐effective or secure enough. Plus, too much data was bogging the system down, leading to long backup windows, a high risk of hardware failurand data storage loss.
KEY REQUIREMENTS
IN CHOOSING
A NEW SOLUTION
1. Reliable and secure backup and recovery
2. Ability to use storage space more efficiently
3. Flexibility in determining the best solution
As the company began to look at choosing a new solution, several key requirements were identified (see chart at left). The customer chose to use Continu Vault online backup and recovery because it met all of their needs.
The most important factor in choosing EVault SaaS online backup was that it provided reliable and secure backup so that if the servers went down, data could be quickly and easily recovered. Continu Vault provides end‐to‐end encryption for data security and has tier 3 and 4 data centers with SAS 70 Type II certification. This provided the customer with the assurance that their data would be protected and could not be accessed by anyone but specific individuals within their company. Continu Vault is easy to use and provides fast recovery – no need to find tapes or take multiple steps to recover data.
