eliminating the need to store or back
up redundant data. Second, this
particular user liked the bare-metal
recovery capability. His comment
was that you can actually go back to
a point in time just prior to a hard
drive crash and within five minutes
do a restore of that entire laptop.
Then he could cut a CD and send it
out to the user if he was somewhere
else so the user could recover the
entire laptop. Increasingly, it’s not
enough to recover the data. Solutions need to be able to recover
the entire system—the operating
system, the file system, the applications and the user data.
DA: The IDC survey revealed that data
privacy and security concerns and the
perception that the potential cost
savings in using an online backup
service did not justify a change from
“Solutions need to be able to recover
the entire system—the operating system,
the file system, the applications
and the user data.”
current on-premises methodologies
are two of the reasons companies
do not consider online backup.
What’s your reaction to that?
LD: I find that firms are doing due
diligence on the security and data
privacy front, vetting the technical
architectures and implementations
of different suppliers. For firms of
certain sizes and industries, the
security concerns are valid. Choosing the wrong supplier can have
consequences. However, I think over
time, user concerns will start to
dissipate as we collectively, as an
industry, gain more confidence with
an online approach. In addition, the
current economic climate will drive
an increase in the consideration of
online services as a cost-effective,
viable approach to an in-house
implementation. Of course, not all
solutions are equal, in price, features or reliability. When evaluating different solutions, firms need
to speak with reference accounts,
review the supplier’s architecture,
and vet their security choices and
implementations, as well as compare
the costs of doing it themselves
versus leveraging an online approach.
However, areas where we anticipate
seeing an acceleration effect are in
the areas of online services, which
afford attractive CAPEX [capital
expenditure] and OPEX [operations
expenditure] savings, as well as in
the area of storage optimization, de-duplication, compression, thin provisioning, etc. I think Iron Mountain
and other online offerings will be
positioned well to capitalize on the
unfortunate economic situation. ▲
DA: How do the prospects for spending on Storage-as-a-Service, backup
and other Iron Mountain offerings
look in light of micro-market trends
and the macroeconomic picture?
LD: As I mentioned, we expect the
economic climate will have an effect
on storage and software spending.
LAURA DUBOIS has over a decade
of experience in the storage
industry with focus on backup
and recovery, replication, storage management, compliance and
content-addressed storage. Prior
to joining IDC, she held various
leadership positions in product
management and software engineering for companies such as
EMC, StorageNetworks and Hitachi
Data Systems. Her expertise is
often called upon at industry
forums and conferences, and she
is frequently quoted in trade and
press publications.
