The Value of IBM Spectrum Protect From a Remote Management MSP

The full value of IBM Spectrum Protect can be provided through a Remote Management MSP specializing in Data Backup and Recovery.

IBM data protection solutions, featuring IBM Spectrum Protect™, enable advanced data backup and data recovery for virtual, physical, cloud and software defined environments – as well as core applications and remote facilities. IBM Spectrum Protect, formerly Tivoli Storage Manager family, is a member of the IBM Spectrum Storage™ family. These solutions offer value to any size organization with any recovery objective.

DataNew era cloud environments and applications such as analytics, mobile and social are driving huge growth in data volumes, making data the new natural resource.  The increased complexity and the general evolution of what we now recognize as mission-critical data. These increasingly complex data types are rendering your old data backup and recovery plan obsolete. There should be no hesitation to prioritize the review and update of the corporate data disaster recovery plan.

Central backup procedures must be reviewed for proper governance and assurance of data resiliency. This data is now mission critical and must be treated as legacy business data, just like Accounting, Payroll, etc. This provides an additional burden on the IT staff in understanding the implications of developing backup procedures for these diverse data types.

A remote data backup and recovery model using IBM Spectrum Protect, such as that from Salvus Data, is a direction that should be considered to manage the new data types and complexity. Salvus Data develops and remotely executes the business critical backup strategy. With the Salvus Cloud Management Data Backup/Recovery solution, the client has the most up to date data backup processes without the overhead and time to maintain it. In addition, the client has:

  • access to a team that spends their time doing backups 7×24 365 days a year.
  • the option to have Data Backup/Recovery efforts in-house or at the location of their choice.
  • an American partner who understands business needs within the United States.

The Salvus Data Consultants centrally monitors and manages the backup environments more cost-effectively and with increased service levels. For more information contact Salvus Data at 903-201-7233.

The SMB Has The Same Data Challenges as The Large Enterprise Today

Although the SMB is nimble, the SMB also has the challenge of a limited IT staff while data is becoming increasingly more complex.

There are trends impacting the perspective of business, while they prioritize their data backup and resilience programs.

Big Data

Customers using Data Backup and Recovery Solutions are evaluating their present backup and recovery strategies. This is being motivated due to the increase in data complexity because of data variety, velocity and volume.

The Internet of Things

Businesses are integrating specialized devices and applications with core business processes for analytics and advanced business processing. This data from these specialized devices in cars, water meters, etc., has now become corporate data.

Data ManagementThere is a need for the data from all types of devices and social media sources. The result is more complex data types within the SMB business data environment. Businesses are integrating specialized devices and applications with core business processes for analytics and advanced business processing. This data has now become corporate data. SMBs must ensure that critical data is available when needed, even as environments become more complex. Data must also be resilient in the face of regulations, hackers and natural disasters. If disaster does strike, recovery must be fast so there is a minimal impact to the bottom line.

This provides an additional burden on the IT staff in understanding the implications of developing backup procedures for these diverse data types. Central backup procedures must be reviewed by IT for proper governance and assurance of data resiliency. The old method of passing the responsibility of Backup and Recovery to the newest and most junior IT staff person is no longer an option when mission-critical data is now in a combination of structured and unstructured complex formats. The need for a comprehensive data backup strategy becomes more critical to the business, while the implementation of that strategy becomes more complex.

The solution is a Data Backup/Recovery Managed Service Providers (DB/R MSP) that provides remote management of the Backup process, along with professional Disaster Backup and Recovery consultation. Contracting a data backup consultant with the model of remote DB/R management allows the business to maintain their data locally without the need to hire new staff or train existing staff in sophisticated data backup and recovery processes.

Understand How Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Interrelate

Understanding the importance of Disaster Recovery within a Business Continuity plan has become more important as data types and regulatory requirements have become more complex.

To begin, the difference of disaster recovery and business continuity must be understood. Both disciplines describe a company’s preparation for the mitigation of risks to continued operations. Disaster recovery applies to the technology operations of the business. Whereas, business continuity has a larger scope that includes technology, physical assets and manual business processes such as workflow, customer service and more. As stated in the StandBy article BCP vs DRP “A mistake often made by organisations is that ‘we have an IT DR Plan, we are all ok“.  That is not the case.  You need to have a Business Continuity Plan in place for critical personnel, key business processes, recovery of vital records, critical suppliers identification, contacting of key vendors and clients etc.”

Developing business continuity planThe complexity of these plans has increased along with their importance. For the disaster recovery plan, regulation has added a level of sophistication that was not required as it is today. Data backup and recovery strategies must meet company policies regarding regulatory requirements, data breaches, ability to respond to court orders, and more.

There are real life situations that require the ability to “look back in time”. Consider that data is not only required to be backed up for protection of a catastrophic event, but, it also needs to be restored in different ways for different purposes and meet varying requirements. A request can be made from a government regulatory body to retrieve data from a certain date or from a past event. This requires coordinated strategies and testing to ensure these types of requests can be accomplished. Data Backup strategies must be planned and tested to assure all company requirements regarding data retention and recovery are met.

Data types have become more complex as the Internet of Things has expanded the scope of what data is, where it comes from and what it looks like. As we stated earlier in this Blog in the post THE IOT IS RENDERING YOUR OLD DATA BACK AND RECOVERY PLAN OBSOLETE, “Businesses are integrating the IoT with their mission critical applications at an accelerated rate. There is a need for data from specialized devices and applications to be made available to business applications. The data being generated from devices in trucks, shipping docks, and house water meters are being integrated with core business processes for analytics and advanced business processing. So, this data has now become corporate data.”

Data recovery and its interrelationship with business continuity plans must be understood and then reevaluated to meet modern requirements. Consult with professionals that understand theses complex relationships, such as Salvus Data Consultants, of Texas.