Remote backup in the spotlight

Well, it has taken years, but the data protection requirements of off-site data (that is, data at remote or branch offices) are finally getting the attention of storage vendors industry-wide.

Blame it on falling margin on enterprise-class technologies or attribute it to the real, and growing, awareness by organizations that a very large percentage of their mission-critical data is off-site and subject to the same regulatory compliance and corporate governance requirements as their on-site data, but remote office data protection is front and center today.

Consider these stats:

• An estimated 60% to 70% of mission-critical data is stored and used at off-site locations.
• According to the US Census 2002, the 17,000 companies with more than 500 employees have more than one million offices.

Those are some pretty powerful numbers! Sixty to 70% of mission-critical data is off-site – and the bulk of that is likely unprotected. And these numbers don't factor in all the data out in the field that may not be "mission-critical" but is "business-critical" nonetheless. Data at remote sites, like on-site data, should be analyzed for its intrinsic business value. It should be part of an information life-cycle management (ILM) strategy and even an "intelligent" information management (IIM) strategy, as this technology becomes available.

There are a lot of affordable and easy-to-use remote data protection solutions out there, and a lot more are on the way! Options include wide area file services (WAFS), disk-based backup (with remote capabilities), and even traditional backup applications. Vendors and solutions abound. Bottom line: When it comes to remote data protection, "out of sight, out of mind" is no longer acceptable.