When I look at current IT trends and see companies like Microsoft
getting into the software-as-a-service (SaaS) or cloud-based backup and
recovery space, it demonstrates that most vendors see SaaS and cloud-based
computing as a real marketplace on both the business or commercial sides of the
house. It’s evident that more end-users and businesses are increasingly looking
at cloud-based backup services as one less thing they need to manage and that
can be delivered as reliably and at a lower cost than what it costs them to do
backup today.
Most businesses small and large have many IT needs but one
that they continue to focus on as they move into a completely paperless world
is data protection and, more specifically, data recovery. They know their
current in-house backup and recovery processes are often less than adequate so
when they ask hard questions like, “How long can I afford to be without my data?”
and “What does losing that data mean to the company and the company’s public
reputation?”, they don’t like the answers. But what IT managers are surprised
to learn as they look to move to a SaaS offering based on a cloud-based
computing architecture for their backup and recovery services, they find there
are many options from which to choose.
Yet one offering that has distinguished itself in the cloud-computing/SaaS
market place is the Asigra Televaulting solution. Unlike most other offerings
that are just starting out, Asigra has 20+ years in the business of outsourced
data protection. Asigra already has established relationships with hundreds of
managed service providers (MSPs) that each service tens if not hundreds of
clients. All of these combined equal petabytes of backup data already under the
management of Asigra Televaulting.
Further, by moving from an in-house backup and recovery
environment into an Asigra powered cloud-based service model it reduces, if not
altogether eliminates, some of the following costs associated with backup and
recovery in an IT environment:
- Personnel costs. Moving backup administrators
and operational people to other areas adds more value to the business
while it eliminates the personnel costs associated with tape media
management and movement. - Infrastructure costs. By outsourcing backups and
using a third-party provider, resources previously dedicated for backup
can be redeployed for other purposes.. For instance, organizations can redeploy
backup servers, retire, scale back or remove tape libraries and tape
drives as well as the areas of the building used for physical tape storage
areas - Offsite
storage costs. An aspect of data protection that organizations often do not
think about is how much they pay monthly and annually to store tape
cartridges offsite and the ongoing costs associated with moving these tape
cartridges to and from these offsite facilities.
Asigra Televaulting coupled with its existing, extensive
and established network of MSPs breaks the barrier to traditional backup and
recovery approaches by keeping customers’ risks low. Daily I hear from
end-users that they are looking for more unique and cost-effective ways of
running their IT business. Moving to an outsourced cloud-based computing backup
model is a great way to reduce backup and recovery costs while at the same time
creating a more reliable and robust backup and recovery infrastructure.