If Your Data is is in a Wreck, will your Business Continuity Software Protect You?

The analogy that business continuity software is a lot like automobile insurance is a valid comparison to make. Companies buy business continuity software for the same reasons that they buy automobile insurance: protection against unexpected loss. In fact, most companies cannot fathom NOT buying automobile insurance since if their employees are driving company vehicles and are involved in some type of wreak it presents an incalculable and unforeseen financial risk to the company's bottom line. It is for the same reason that companies buy business continuity software for their corporate applications - they need similar levels of assurance that their data is protected and is readily available in the event that they have to bring their applications back online should a man-made or natural disaster occur.

Yet there is one flaw in this assumption and that is that all business continuity software is created equal - and this is where the business continuity/auto insurance analogy breaks down. Any company that has purchased automobile insurance knows that automobile policies are fairly similar regardless of whom the provider is. While there are differences in coverage and service agreements, companies basically know that once the insurance policy is purchased, they can have some assurance they are protected.

Equally important to keep in mind is that there are a number of vendors that claim they can provide business continuity software that can span the enterprise from mission critical applications to file and web servers. But what is less intuitive is how easy this software is to implement or manage. Most often, if companies do want centralized business continuity software for all of their applications and servers across the enterprise from just one provider, they need to purchase multiple product offerings from that provider to satisfy all of their requirements. Not only does this become cost-prohibitive, it is complex to administer and difficult to ascertain if it actually works.

The huge problem with this approach is that after spending so much time and money to purchase and configure their business continuity software, they still have no assurance that it works. In fact, the only product that comes close to eliminating this gap in business continuity software is InMage Systems DR-Scout. It operates at the host level so it integrates with common applications (Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server), can protect data at both the file and block levels, offers options to protect data at a storage system perspective and is exploring options to offer these services on network switches. Because it can protect at all of these different levels of the infrastructure and meet the requirements of low cost as well as mission critical applications using the same underlying technology, companies can for the first time consider obtaining business continuity software that truly spans the enterprise.

The analogy that business continuity software is like automobile insurance is true only inasmuch that they both are intended to protect companies from potential disasters. But when companies start to think about the possibility of their data actually being in a wreck due to a man-made or natural disasters regardless of where it is in the enterprise, the reality of just how difficult it is to recover becomes self-evident. Only InMage Systems DR-Scout is coming close to making enterprise business continuity as turnkey as automobile insurance by providing companies a central point to manage recoveries at any level in the enterprise while still giving them the same level of confidence that they can recover as their auto insurance gives them now.