Backup is dead. Long live backup!

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The editor of Storage Newsletter made a handful of waves earlier this month when he wrote an opinion piece entitled ‘Backup is dead’. He made the point that copy nowadays has no much more interest and organizations only need replication.

I won’t go into the merits of replication and de-depulication of files along with the positive aspects of backing up blocks instead of files (or even the problems encountered when indexing and matching hashes), on the other hand I think that a statement like backup is dead is somewhat premature and way off the mark.

The stage I want to make is that in numerous corporations, in particular smaller and medium sized setups, back-up has NOT even been born like a idea let alone a tried and tested tactic.

Many people and organizations don't back up their information or if they do, it’s a piecemeal affair, accomplishing just adequate (sic) to have a copy stored somewhere (insecurely, no doubt) and presumably updated whenever someone remembers to do yet another back-up.

Far from ‘backup is dead’, I’d go as far as stating that ‘backup will not exist’ in many organizations. Firms admit that info is significant, they know that it’s the lifeblood of their organization but number of get round to really accomplishing something about it – products are as well expensive, they have licensing challenges, freeware versions have limitations, network-wide backups are complex… the list goes on.

A survey by Rubicon Consulting identified that whilst tiny and mid-size organizations are grappling with explosive facts growth, the back up processes they have in place generally set that files at risk. The survey, also discovered that 92% of companies have deployed some form of facts backup technology, however 50% of them have lost facts. Of the businesses that shed information, roughly one-third lost sales, 20% lost clients, and one-quarter claimed the files reduction caused severe disruptions for the business.

The survey also determined that concerns about possible facts reduction run high among SMBs. Respondents rated back up as their second-highest computing concern, soon after defense against viruses along with other malware, and ahead of troubles like reducing expenses and deploying new computers. Nevertheless just about one-third of SMBs surveyed do nothing to back up their info.

Individuals organizations that do back-up their facts often focus on server-level backups but pay small attention to data stored on workstations… and there is many corporate info lying close to on employees’ machines.

Instead of haggling over which back up technique is the right one particular, numerous businesses even now should get down to backing up their info. SMBs should give information burn a priority listing and minimize the possibility that some thing will go wrong (and it will!)

A few years ago, faxing was provided up for dead too. Today, fax servers are however going powerful. Now, burn is dead. Or so we’re getting told.

You'll be able to be the judge of that!