is faster than recovering over a network, a critical
point for problems that fall far short of being a disaster but still require recovery.
Still, the question remains: Why would organizations want a cloud computing backup solution if they
already have disaster recovery sites in place? Note
that Iron Mountain’s CloudRecovery solution is only
for storage, so in the case of a disaster that made the
primary site unavailable for a longer than acceptable
period of time, the Iron Mountain agent would need
to be loaded onto a DPM server at a different site,
then the data recovered over the Internet. The primary reason, then, for using CloudRecovery is that
the burden of managing secondary storage is transferred to a third-party, technology-enabled services
ments the need for the traditional vaulting of magnetic
tapes or other physical media transported from onsite
to offsite. While Iron Mountain has been a leader in the
vaulting business for years, this new solution allows it
to provide a comprehensive set of data protection and
recovery solutions.
Microsoft benefits from this effort because it makes
the DPM solution more valuable to customers by leveraging it across three data sources (disk, tape and cloud)
instead of two.
The effort should help Microsoft make inroads into
the STaaS market. Microsoft also gains a trusted partner
with a reputation for delivering high-quality and highly
reliable services. Along with working with Microsoft
on joint development, marketing and sales efforts, Iron
Iron Mountain has long played the role of a trusted
third party as the custodian of key data, as well providing
other capabilities and services that can help users
meet compliance and governance requirements.
supplier, namely Iron Mountain. That greatly simpli-fies the need and eliminates the costs of deploying
and maintaining a complex DR site.
There is another important reason that Cloud
Recovery is a great deal for customers: Backup data
supports compliance and governance purposes
where proving the authenticity of the data or preserving it for civil litigation cases and eDiscovery
is critical. Iron Mountain has long played the role of
a trusted third party as the custodian of that data,
as well as providing other capabilities and services
that can help users meet compliance and governance
requirements. For example, Stratify®, an Iron Mountain company, has announced an eDiscovery disaster
recovery protocol. Although that is an effort separate
from CloudRecovery, the principle is that the user is
at least halfway there if the data is already in an Iron
Mountain site.
What to call the new Microsoft–Iron Mountain
solution is interesting. Backing up data via cloud
computing is as useful a process as it is over a private
network. However, SaaS (software-as-a-service) is
another useful term to consider in this context, since
together Microsoft’s DPM and Iron Mountain’s Cloud
Recovery qualify as cloud-enabled Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS). And, by the way, the pair’s solution
qualifies as electronic vaulting that replaces or aug-
Mountain has an authorized tap into the DPM portion of
the Microsoft customer base where it could build relationships and further business. That is what is known
as a very good deal.
A sign of things to come
Moving data backup to the cloud is likely to become
an ever-growing trend for both cost and easing of the
administrative burden of managing secondary remote
storage. Being able to do this transparently through the
use of existing backup and restore software is very desirable. First, customers can continue to use their existing investment in DPM (which includes not only costs
but also the working knowledge invested in an ongoing
process).
Second, customers enjoy an easy way to get high-quality, cost-effective backup storage for disaster recovery. Overall, combined Microsoft DPM 2007 and Iron
Mountain CloudRecovery solution offers a good value
and is likely a sign of things to come. ▲
© 2008 Mesabi Group. All rights reserved
About the Mesabi Group
The Mesabi Group ( www.mesabigroup.com) helps organizations make their
complex storage, storage management and interrelated IT infrastructure decisions
easier by making the choices simpler and clearer to understand.
