It's 2009 - That Means it's Time to Recover

There is an abundance of negativity in the market place right now but most companies are still planning to keep their doors open in 2009 and beyond which means they still plan to spend money, albeit more frugally than before. Granted, companies are taking a hard look at every line item in the budget and cutting the fat but that is not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, companies are using this as a time to introduce new technologies to solve long standing business problems and one issue that appears high on their priority list for 2009 is recovery software.

A recent article on CRN's website indicates that 2009 is shaping up as the year where companies put as much if not more emphasis on recovery than they do any other storage technology. Specifically, one graph in the article indicates that VARs and solution providers believe that recovery software solutions will be the number one area of growth in storage technology for 2009. Equally interesting, it also indicated that they expect growth in recovery software to be more than twice that of deduplication technology (59% for recovery software solutions versus 25% for deduplication).

Granted, this survey is based on feedback from VARs and solution providers, not end-users, but I have learned that VARs and solutions providers are extremely tactical and the ones that are survive and thrive in good times and bad are those who are the most in touch with their customers. So the fact that so many anticipate a good year in the sales of recovery software solutions in 2009 merits consideration. The question is why are recovery software solutions becoming a priority with users?

While there is no one right answer to this question as every user's environment is different, here are some reasons that recovery software solutions are becoming a priority with users:

• Companies still cannot recover their data. The focus of a recent storage seminar that I spoke at in Omaha was on backup and recovery and the room was packed. The feedback I received from the users present was that recovery is still one of their main concerns and that they need better solutions that take less time to manage and cost the same or less than their current solution.
• The cost of recovery software solutions that use disk is now on par with tape-based solutions. Better recovery software solutions have always been inextricably linked with disk but the problem has always been the high cost of disk so companies selected tape based solutions. Now companies such as InMage Systems tell me that they can go head-to-head against tape-based solutions with its Scout software and complimentary disk storage systems. InMage is finding it can match and even beat the price of tape solutions while delivering a recovery software solution that is more reliable and easier to manage.
• Companies need to meet higher expectations for business availability. Jerry Shammas, AT&T's Executive Director for Business Continuity and Recovery Services, shared in an executive briefing in mid-2007 some of the key business drivers as to why now companies need to remain online all of the time. Key reasons he cited included more customers expect the businesses they deal with to be on-line 24x7, it is easier for companies to show an ROI by keeping their operations available all of the time and a scarcity of qualified IT resources. While any one of these reasons alone may not be sufficient for companies to implement a better recovery software solution, these reasons combined with the competitive pricing of these solutions now makes it feasible for companies to justify making a change.

I don't think anyone is going to confuse 2009 with a walk in the park. Yet even in these tough times, companies are still spending money and it appears that one of the long standing problems that businesses are still intent on solving are their issues as it relates to rapidly recovering their business. Because of this, improved recovery software solutions such as InMage Systems' Scout with their more attractive price points and demonstrable ROIs look poised to take front and center with more users in 2009.