"Can You Recover Your Application Data?" Is Not a Trick Question

Have you bothered to examine and evaluate your backup environment lately? I mean really perform a hard core, objective examination of your traditional backup software and what it is delivering or not delivering. In either case, you must ask yourself the following questions; and the answers to these questions may be disturbing to some readers:

• Is your backup software even close to doing what it was designed to do? Read: Are all of your backup jobs completing successfully and within expected application backup windows?
• Do you even have a backup window for your applications? Read: Does everyone go home at 5:00 pm and not log in again until 7:00 am (or later) the next morning giving you uninterrupted time to backup your data?
• Is your current backup product meeting the needs of your business? Read: Can you recover your applications and application data in such a manner that it meets the expectations of the application owners and corporate management?
• How long does it take you to recover? Read: Can you recover your data in 30 minutes or less like your users probably expect? Or is it the dirty, little corporate IT secret that it can take hours or days to recover data depending on the scope of data loss?

The main problem with traditional backup software is that it was designed to solve yesterday's problems based on yesterday's computing infrastructures. In the past, companies essentially operated from 7 am until 7 pm giving IT the opportunity to run uninterrupted backup jobs at night; no one really expected IT to bring their applications back online in 30 minutes or less at the primary site, much less at a disaster recovery site; and companies did backup to tape, not disk. For the most part, companies pretty much held, and pretty much still do, hold their collective breathe if IT ever had to or has to recover any data at all.

Everyone knows this cannot continue. Companies expect IT to recover their data and applications; they expect to recover to disk, they expect their recoveries to work; and they expect IT to recover them in 30 minutes or less. So if you think your traditional backup software can deliver on any of those business requirements, you are operating from a false premise. The challenge that corporate IT faces today is not just delivering application and data recovery, it is delivering on the heightened expectations of today's corporate users.

"Can you recover your application data?" is not a trick question nor is it a technical mystery. The problem is that most companies are not properly realigning their software and processes to match the expectations of today's users or today's new computing environment. Companies serious about answering these tough backup and recovery questions need to start acting like these are real questions that have right answers.

InMage Systems' DR-Scout gives companies a viable, proven alternative to not only provide application data recovery, but scales out to backup and recover LAN attached servers across the enterprise. It addresses the recovery expectations of today's users and businesses by storing data to disk, providing point in time recoveries and giving companies local or remote recovery options.

Most importantly, InMage Systems is communicating to companies that application recovery is not hard nor is it a trick question. You can not solve today's problems with technology designed to solve yesterday's problems. InMage Systems' DR-Scout is representative of the new type of disk-based data protection software that companies may use to meet today's application backup and recovery requirements.