During challenging economic times, companies are increasingly questioning every budget dollar they spend. Furthermore, companies are reviewing their core vendor relationships to assess which partnerships have lived up to their expectations vs. which have overpromised and under delivered.
InMage Systems Inc.
Delivering ROI with Data Protection
Published:December 2008
Confidential2008 InMage Systems, Inc. All Rights ReservedDelivering Data Protection with ROI
Introduction: Challenging Times Demand ROI Focused Vendors
During challenging economic times, companies are increasingly questioning every budget dollar theyspend. Furthermore, companies are reviewing their core vendor relationships to assess whichpartnerships have lived up to their expectations vs. which have overpromised and under delivered. Foryears, many vendors claimed to provide technologies that solve a major challenge, generate ROI andreduce complexity. Unfortunately many of these vendor claims failed to live up to their originalpromises. As a result, more than ever before, IT organizations are seeking new solutions that improvethe operational efficiency of their business meeting their ROI expectations while consolidating thenumber of technologies to reduce their budgets.Today's economy is forcing IT organizations to drill down and ask tough questions such as:Does my current solution portfolio provide quantifiable benefits and ROI?Are my vendor partners helping us meet or exceed our IT objectives?Most corporations share a set of common goals: maximize profits while streamlining budgets. Thesegoals are simple in concept but not always easy to achieve in the ongoing pursuit of "strategic" ITinitiatives.
What if a technology vendor knocked on your door today and said, "I have a solution that":. Is simple, quick and risk-averse to implement. Is platform independent. Helps provide a rapid return on investment and reduction to your budget in multiple areas. Eliminates and reduces your downtime. Protects your data. Simplifies and ensures your Disaster Recovery Policies
At this point, you would most likely walk away and not believe the claims listed above. This whitepaperwill examine many of the challenges and cost factors associated with data protection, and conclude withan overview of a vendor that truly has "a solution that" delivers on the above promises: InMage DR-Scout.
Data Protection: Common Approaches and Related Cost Factors
Confidential2008 InMage Systems, Inc. All Rights ReservedTape BackupTraditionally companies spent a significant amount of their IT budget protecting data that is backed upand stored on tape media. Tape backup systems are unreliable and resource intensive. These systemsrequire dedicated servers and people resources during their nightly incremental and weekly full backupwindows. Tape backup processing windows cause two major problems; fully utilized servers and data isunprotected during the backup cycle. Should a catastrophe strike your site, you may need to restore yourdata from these tapes. Restoration processes can range from several hours to days depending on thevolume of data. Furthermore, statistics show that you will lose 40% of your data stored on tape media.In addition, you may need a service provider that stores your archived tapes. This service will ensurethat your tapes are offsite and in a secure location. Your IT department may also utilize the peopleadministering your application(s) on a quarterly or annual basis. These application experts will mostoften test mounting the data from tape and validating that your databases or critical files are still intact.There are seven costly areas associated with tape backup systems:1. Labor - People to maintain tape media, backup policies and procedures.2. Media - Cost of tape media.3. Licensing - Tape backup software license and annual maintenance.4. Backup Window - Application downtime and risk during dedicated tape backup windows.5. Offsite Storing - Monthly fees to store archived tapes off-site.6. Testing Data - The costs and time associated with validating data that is stored on tapes.7. Downtime Costs - This is a cost that is separate from testing when the data has to be restored.The restoration process can range from several hours to days.
Storage ReplicationIf you have a SAN environment and are replicating data between hosts and sites, you will most likelyhave a product or multiple products that are performing snapshots or replication. There are licensingand administration costs with these platforms. Let's also not forget the associated hardware costs for thearray product(s) you have. While data restoration can be completed within a reasonable amount of time,this does no... [download for more]
