In a small business, IT may be a one-person shop. This one person becomes application development, application support, and administration of all network, server, storage, backup, and recovery management resources. Current backup strategies often cause companies to think about backup and DR every two-to-three years due to the growth of data and limited scalability of in-house solutions. If properly implemented, a cloud-based approach could eliminate this recurring issue.
On the November 13, 2012 Peer Incite, Paul Martin, IT Manager of Poulin Grain, started down the path of examining cloud backup solutions as a replacement for his current, capacity-constrained Oracle ExaGrid solution. The cost of a service is expected to be significantly less than hardware upgrades, and in the cloud, scalability will not be a constraint. Several ISVs, such as Veeam and Asigra, integrate with cloud service providers for backup and recovery. As Wikibon’s Dave Vellante points out, while the upfront cost of cloud solutions is compelling, the total cost of recovery and potential risk of any downtime must be considered in the overall evaluation.
Action Item: The modern data center has too many pieces for the overworked IT group not only to maintain, but also upgrade and expansion. While Cloud-based services are neither a panacea, nor always the most cost effective, small businesses are encouraged to examine many of the backup services that can eliminate the treadmill upgrades of backup solutions.
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