I had a bit of an unusual experience the other day. I was the first one into a conference room and on one of the chairs was a life jacket. No explanation – just sitting there. Of course, I found it a funny commentary on some of the meetings we have at EMC.
But on a metaphorical level, it also made me think about throwing a life jacket to backup administrators. It seems appropriate – it’s pretty well documented how we are “drowning” in the volumes of data generated.
In a new analyst study documenting cost savings generated from backup transformation, the limitations of current backup approaches are stark. The companies interviewed for the study said they were working more than eight hours each day just to meet current workloads. They reported spending countless hours on mind-numbing problems like getting stuck tapes out of drives and manually checking to see if backup jobs were completed.
In contrast, with backup redesign these same companies said they saw an 81% decline in the time to manage backups and an average of €1.4 million savings in physical tape costs over three years.
I wonder who would argue with me: getting stuck tapes out of drives doesn’t add value to the business. It doesn’t make your company more competitive. It doesn’t prepare you for future data growth, future regulations or future changes to the business climate. IT has the opportunity to be strategic to the business – helping with the systems, data access and analysis to reduce your time to market, increase your customer satisfaction and beat the competition.
Next generation backup is not only your life jacket – it’s also your lifeboat. Not sure how to pay for this lifeboat? The good news is that on average the customers surveyed in the study saw the solutions pay for themselves in 7 months. All around this sounds like a winning proposition – get out of the tape management business and set up your IT department to meet business priorities. That has all the makings for backup heroes in my view.
The Right Architecture Is Priceless, Part IEvolving data protection technology and expanding requirements have completely transformed the backup industry. Unfortunately, with such rapid change, many organizations have fallen into the chaos of an accidental architecture.
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