Don’t forget the ROBO!

ROBOs (remote office/branch offices) have almost as much data to deal with as corporate IT at the data center, but they are treated as second-class citizens. You know, the goofy cousin who we tolerate but ignore whenever possible.

Is ROBO data any less valuable than data center data? Nope. By our count, about 30% of an organization's mission-critical data is off-site at ROBOs -- and another 30%-40% is on PCs, laptops, and PDAs. Not protecting this data is like not protecting a crown jewel; it is a big mistake -- one that will cost you big time sooner or later.

So, why do we treat ROBO data so haphazardly? Frankly, because we haven't had any other option. Traditional backup and recovery applications stink under the best conditions. How do we expect them to work in a part-time world?

But the industry is finally waking up to ROBOs -- and is pioneering alternatives for protecting these environments. WAFS (wide area file services) tackles the problem by physically moving ROBO data back to the data center. It is a fantastic idea but is geared more toward new file services and doesn't replace server systems like SQL and Exchange. Replication of major databases and critical application servers back to the data center is another option. Good but it requires double the infrastructure. And EVault and Iron Mountain provide services and products that are specifically designed to back up ROBO data to their data center or yours. Promising stuff.

But Asigra probably offers one of the most complete overall ROBO backup-and-recovery solutions today. It scales at an enterprise-level, has the technology to minimize impact (it has built-in de-duplication, is agent-less, etc.), and lets corporate IT treat ROBOs as separate business entities for billing purposes.

If hardware vendors were smart -- and most aren't in this area -- they'd realize that the ROBOs collectively add up to 100% new opportunity for them in the data center. They can potentially double the gear they sell inside the data center if they consolidate ROBO data (i.e., push it back to the data center). The first vendor to get this is going to make a killing!