Whitepaper : Cloud Based Backup for Mobile Users and Remote Sites The Organisational Challenges We propose three key organizational principles for assessing backup Security Control Performance Functional requirements of the solution are balanced against these factors: Type of data Amount of data Number of devices Location of devices Available upstream bandwidth Change rate Growth rate Effective delivery of IT services requires the right mix of processes, people and technology. As with everything, resources which can be spent on these areas are finite. There is now a real pressure on IT functions to: Improve and ensure certainty of service levels Provide confidence to their management that IT will not be the weak link Support increasing demand for agility to cope with dynamic mobile users All whilst continually driving down the cost of delivery of the service. Resolutions cloud based applications lower costs, increase productivity, and contribute increased control over remote data balancing mobility for employees. In a recent marked change cloud services such as online backup are more widely used by enterprises worldwide. Cloud based applications lower costs, increase productivity, and contribute to work/life balance for employees. This paper draws on customer experience, the potential threats to remote data, and explains why most on-premise backup solutions currently in place today are ineffective when we consider the remote user and costs of the service delivery. Many enterprises rely on ageing backup solutions that simply do not provide the protection needed for today s dynamic mobile environment. They also place stress on the security, control, and the performance of legacy backup system and infrastructure. Good-enough backup is not sufficient to keep data-loss at bay, clear up after and recover from human error and to meet regulatory demands. In an interconnected, always-on world, the backup challenge needs to be dynamic. Worryingly for IT teams, their resources have remained flat or even decreased while remote user numbers (and therefore the number of remote mobile machines they need to support) are increasing. With economic downturn and little hope of increased IT staffing budgets, IT teams are more in need than ever of a solution that can help laptop users manage their own machines and act as their own first line of defence. Consequently, the traditional role of the IT department as the sole guardian of backup can only be maintained at great expense.
A new generation of cloud application is emerging and increasing in sophistication over time with increased uptake of these applications. There are relevant specific organizations who can save on costs, and profit financially against the bottom line by reducing backup costs on-premise where the only option is purchase hardware and software through capital expenditure. Today s business model relies on the web to provide inbound access for remote employees, partners, and customers from any location, anywhere in the world. Internal employees also reach out beyond the edge of the corporate network to access hosted applications, collaborate on information across the Internet, gathering this data together into a single pool off-site, may seem obvious, however according to recent studies, up to 74% of businesses might not be doing this. Laptop users are often senior staff members or mobile employees, often in sales or other revenue- generating positions. These high-value employees need their lost, damaged or stolen laptop replaced or recovered as fast as possible if they are to continue delivering profitability to the business. Downtime for this group of employees is often a far more expensive proposition than the cost of the actual laptop itself. What are the alternatives for organisations which can no longer afford these spiralling costs in today s tough economic climate? This paper argues for a hosted solution, playing to the advantages of cloud computing, where organisation and service provider share responsibility for data security. How is your backup infrastructure holding up? Is confidential endpoint data being protected retained, and easily restorable? Is your web gateway struggling to provide backup services and core applications? Are you prioritizing bandwidth for the best business benefit? Are you prepared for the data from remote systems or offices to be lost? Dissolving perimeters, evolving workplaces, and the adoption of the cloud require flexible deployment options: staging server, software, and cloud-based and all workers need protection, no matter from what location they call their office.
Moving the backup to the cloud Customers can leverage backup and recovery directly from the cloud with an online backup and recovery service. Like other SaaS applications, online backup is an alternative to an on-premise software application, both the backup application and information storage reside off-site. This approach allows customers to move away from expensive upfront investments in backup hardware, software, and personnel with an affordable monthly or yearly subscription-based service. This can then scale to meet the businesses future needs as when as and when the organization grows. Cloud backup lets a company leave it to the experts and can be optimized to work over very limited bandwidth connections between corporate locations and the remote datacentres. Backup services provide a route towards: Ensuring regular and consistent backups; with online backup solutions, backups can be completely automated and the vendor assumes more (but not all) of the responsibility for the success of the backups and restores. However, vendors provide web-based portals to view completed backups and backup version histories, initiate restores, and run reports, thus allowing management visibility of the successes of the backup routine. Help you manage costs; with a subscription-based model, the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure to support the backup application is spread across numerous customers, allowing the service provider to offer the service at a lower cost than would otherwise be possible, the concept of multi tenancy is driving the industry as economies of scale are already pushing the cost of services down. To providing affordable, reliable, off-site protection, online backup eliminates the need to physically transport tapes or removable external drives, as data is held in the network operations centre (NOC). Security as the services data is streamed to the NOC, encrypted first locally, then in transit and then encrypted again at rest with different encryption algorithms, so to ensure complete security. Control of the data backup pool Scalable to meet the changing needs of the business, especially growth in the size of the business and its web use. Today s, start-ups are tomorrows SMB s, today s SMB s are tomorrow s enterprises. Flexible deployment; Provide options that meet strategic needs: on site, in the cloud, or hybrid solutions for complex systems such as databases. Reduce cost and simplify management by consolidating backup into an integrated solution. Manageable; use comprehensive management, and reporting tools. Granular backup features; move beyond a binary block or allow approach to provide selective, policy-based backup.
A Cloud backup service for remote offices provides regular and automated backups for sites lacking local staff or significant bandwidth. It can also reduce infrastructure requirements at the remote site, such as local tape systems, media servers, and IT professionals, and can be managed remotely also, affording remote and branch offices the same protection as headquarters, often many remote and branch offices have limited or no backup in place. Cloud backup is perfect for businesses with: No local or limited IT staff Smaller data sets; where network bandwidth is a consideration when data sets are large. Limited applications and databases on local servers or a limited number of local applications or databases generally mean you have less data or applications to recover. No hardware for the backup process, businesses that have no plans to invest in hardware, and no desire to own or manage it. Desire to reduce cost as more and more companies adopt SaaS elsewhere in their business to recognise the benefits of agility, low initial price and pay-as-you-grow over on-premise solutions hardware based self-managed solutions. The need to focus on business operations, online backup helps to relieve remote offices of backup duties which are a distraction. Comparison of cost and responsibilities: Costs: Old model: Tape Labour Hardware New Model Subscription Setup On-going management Support provided by experts from the application/service provider or local reseller Responsibilities: Old Model: You run it You fix it when it breaks You upgrade it when you update the server You bare the full costs Huge over-provisioning New Model: You inform the service provider of issues The service provider fixes it The service provider upgrades the client upload agent Pay as you go minimal over-provisioning
Drivers of Cloud Backup Multiple factors have created the perfect storm for cloud backup to grow and become established in the SMB market. These factors have decreased the cost of cloud adoption, and simultaneously increased demand, and as time goes by and demand grows the cost of such services, is likely to decrease, which if not offset by the increase in data retained could produce additional savings. Expansion of internet bandwidth Penetration of broadband internet connections has increased rapidly, particularly among developed nations and businesses, across the world. At the end of 1989, there were 1.1 million internet users worldwide and approximately 86% of them were in the United States. However, in 2010, there were over 2 billion internet users, and it is estimated that by 2015, this will increase to 2.89 billion users. This change represents an anticipated growth rate of a remarkable 29.8%. Summary In today s austere economy backup and business continuity is a cost that a dwindling number of organisations can afford. By moving to a hosted infrastructure especially a cloud model with its on-demand service provision and instant scalability organisations can free expensive technical staff currently entrenched in the data to tape backup battle to help drive innovation and revenue. This does not mean divesting responsibility for data security entirely to a service provider, but sharing it with a partner whose expertise is in backup. Moving backup and disaster recovery to the cloud presents a variety of advantages to organizations. Primarily, it allows a shift in efforts and labour from maintenance to new initiatives. This allows a company to focus on its core competencies, explore new opportunities, become more competitive, and increase business revenue. There is additional evidence to support the idea that massive adoption of cloud backup by businesses is yet to occur but is imminent. Industry analysts expect organizations to double their budget allocation to cloud services between 2010 and 2014. There is not a great deal of room in IT budgets for this increase. In 2010, a mere 1.6% of IT spending was dedicated to cloud services; however, IDC expects that by 2014, this figure will grow to 3%. - While still seeming small, this prediction shows the spending dedicated adoption and spending intentions on cloud services actually doubling in just four years, with this growth, it could easily be anticipated that there will be a decrease in the cost of backup services, as the cost of disk storage has continually decreased over time.