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Is your data being properly backed up? Can you handle backup and restore functions? Is your data secure in case of a disaster? Are you following recommended processes for data protection? Are you staffed to do it right? If you answered "no" to any of these questions, your business-critical data is at risk.
Once a mundane administrative task handled by the late shift, data backup has emerged from obscurity to become a strategic and resource-intensive function. As the value of information continues to rise, protecting and effectively recovering vital corporate data has become critical to the success of new economy companies and established firms alike.
Mismanaging Storage Hits the Bottom Line
On the surface, backup appears to be a simple, straightforward task. And, at one time, it was. But today the sheer amount of data that must be managed is overwhelming. Data volume has doubled annually for the past several years, and is expected to continue to grow exponentially for the foreseeable future. I/0 bandwidth strains to keep pace, and traditional architecture slows an already slow process.
More bad news: The cost of unmanaged or poorly managed storage can be staggering. Studies from industry-watcher Dataquest show the cost per gigabyte of storage dropping 25% to 35% annually. A gigabyte of storage today costs less than $10 and may drop to $1 by 2005. However, the same research shows that the cost of managing a terabyte of data is five to seven times the cost of purchasing it. The visible and hidden costs of monitoring, tracking, and managing enterprise storage represents as much as half of all IT costs.
The challenges facing enterprise...