Archival Data Storage Cannot Be Left Forgotten and Still Remain Resilient

Data must be resilient. And Data Resilience is from being able to to go back to any point in time and selectively recover.

As stated in Building a better archival storage strategy “Data that’s no longer referenced with any frequency tends to fall off the radar. The only concern is that it not be deleted, because that could have devastating consequences.”.

Data RecoveryIt is not good enough that data is just not deleted. There are real life situations that require the ability to “look back in time”. Data backup and recovery strategies must meet company policies regarding regulatory requirements, data breaches, ability to respond to court orders, and more.

Consider that data is not only 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. This requires coordinated strategies and testing. Data Backup strategies must be planned and tested to assure all company requirements regarding data retention and recovery are met.

Salvus Data Consultants is a managed service provider that can assist in evaluating your data backup and recovery processes to ensure that all scenarios are considered to ensure your data is resilient, not just backed up. Then Salvus can manage your entire backup and recovery processes remotely without your data ever leaving your control.

The SMB’s Perspective of Data Backup from a Managed Service Provider

SMBs are implementing Big Data strategies to stay competitive in a global market. Interestingly, the SMB is able to react to, and be more successful in, adopting new technologies than their big company competitors.

The SMB has a more simple corporate structure. This enables employees to make decisions and act quickly without bureaucratic toll gates, as larger companies have. The SMB also does not have the culture that often answers questions that arise from new ideas with ” we tried that and it did not work.” This agility gives the SMB an edge through accelerated innovation. redphone

With the implementation of Big Data comes the need for sophisticated Data Backup and Recovery procedures. Although the SMB is nimble, the SMB also has the challenge of a limited IT staff. 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 SMB will look to the cloud for an answer to their backup needs. However, as Spiceworks reports on “How SMB’s are backing up“, 28% of the SMBs that are avoiding the cloud are avoiding it because they perceive a lack of control of data/security issues. This concern generally comes from the understanding that remote backup processes provided by an MSP require the data to leave the SMB’s network.

This is not necessarily the case. Salvus Data Consultants is a Data Backup/Recovery Managed Service Provider that does not require the data to leave the customer’s network unless the SMB wants the data to be stored offsite. The data can remain within the customer’s network or deployed off site at the customer’s chosen location, while the processes are managed in the cloud.

The benefit gained by deploying the data backup processes in the cloud is having the management of the data backup and recovery performed and scheduled remotely by data consultants that specialize in this field. An additional benefit is to remove the burden from the already stretched IT staff. This addresses the concern that holds back an SMB from proceeding with using an MSP Cloud solution to implement comprehensive BIG Data Backup/Recover processes. 

Big Data Growth Drives Backup Requirements

Managing Big Data is a matter of cutting Macro data into Micro data slices. The large amounts of unstructured data need to be reduced to a view depicting each customer and prospect. When this occurs, the data is transformed into valuable market information that can help drive profits through targeted campaigns and company initiatives.
Evaluating data

Truaxis Insights states that organizations with successful implementation of advanced analytics see 33% more revenue growth and 12X more profit growth.

When looking at the retail industry some obstacles standing in front of full implementation have been that 80% of a retailer company’s data is unstructured according to Truaxis. Unstructured data is difficult to manage and interpret. Over half of the retailers are flooded with more data than they can handle.

While managing and analyzing the data is a challenge, ensuring the integrity of the data is also a factor that cannot be ignored. This data is mission-critical.

A Big Data implementation presents a need for even more focus on the ability to recover from a catastrophic event quickly. However, the IT staff is not often staffed or tooled to design and execute a backup strategy of this level of complexity.  The other consideration is that data backup and recovery can be managed remotely without having the live data be transferred to or running in a cloud environment.

There are Data Backup/Recovery Managed Service Providers (DB/R MSP) that provide remote management of the Backup process, along with professional Disaster Backup and Recovery consultation. A company should look to a service provider that specializes in complex backup strategies while leaving the IT staff time to manage the daily tactical and long-term strategic activities.