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Greetings from EMC World 2013! Another record year with nearly 15,000 people from 80 countries. There is no shortage of news from the show including:
Lady Backup generally doesn’t shamelessly promote EMC products. But there are always exceptions. And this is one of them as we recognize the 10th anniversary of EMC Data Domain.
Thinking back to 2009, the bidding war for Data Domain added a bit of drama and excitement While interesting to watch, at the time I didn’t understand why our executives were so keen on acquiring Data Domain. To me it seemed to be just another storage device – and EMC already had plenty of those.
In reality, the Data Domain appliance revolutionized backup technology. I’ve come to appreciate the innovation of Data Domain and its many “firsts” in the market, which today Continue Reading
Lady Backup has been quiet lately. It’s not that I don’t have things to say – of course I have lots of thoughts and opinions to share.
But I can’t seem to climb out from under my “list of things to do.” I always have the best intentions to think more strategically and address my job with new ideas. But intention without action is just a bunch of hot air.
This isn’t a unique story. Everyone I know is in the same situation – the pace of our business life seems to get faster and faster.
However, when it comes to a backup and recovery strategy, looking in the rear view mirror can have devastating consequences such as lost customer loyalty and giving business to your competitors.
It is only after a significant disruption that many companies look at their backup strategies.
Today we introduce findings from the Disaster Recovery Survey 2013: South Africa. Similar to the survey we ran in both Europe and the Middle East, 74% companies in South Africa are not very confident that they can fully recover after a significant disruption. More than half respond after a disruption by reviewing their procedures and nearly 40% increase their spending on backup and recovery after the fact.
The survey EMC commissioned over the last year provides a rear view mirror of what’s happened across 13 countries and 3,000 IT decision makers. My hope is that the survey findings will cause companies in Europe, the Middle East and South Africa to proactively review their backup and disaster recovery strategy.
Don’t add this to your list of things to do. Take a look now – before the next disruption interrupts your business.
Here is a link to the EMC Disaster Recovery 2013 survey infographic.
LB
In the 3rd party of this series, it should be understood that Lady Backup does not consider a backup an archive. As my colleagues know, I will strongly argue with anyone who considers backup tapes to be an archive.
Now that you understand that, what are the main things you should think about with an archiving solution? I’ll frame the discussion in the context of the 3 key benefits of archiving I discussed in the last blog posts (Part 1/Part 2).
Benefit 1: Archiving increases operational efficiency.
A key benefit to archiving is to keep the production environment lean. You will want an archiving solution that can provide a phased approach. Take an example from email…. Continue Reading
Picking up from last week, Lady Backup asserts that there is a key enabler in IT transformation that we haven’t paid enough attention to: archiving.
Archiving has a key value to play in lower your IT costs, improving your user experience and managing risk for your organization.
Let’s look at the 3 key benefits of archiving in more detail:
Benefit 1: Archiving increases operational efficiency.
How old are the emails stored in your email system? Continue Reading
Welcome 2013! Lady Backup is not one for predictions or resolutions, so don’t worry I’m not looking into my crystal ball.
Rather, I thought we would start the year by looking at an element of IT transformation that we didn’t talk about in 2012.
It is an enabler of IT transformation – contributing to your infrastructure transition from physical to virtual servers and in moving mission critical applications to the cloud. Continue Reading
Lady Backup is pleased to announce that EMC is the winner for the 2nd year in the V3 Technology Awards.
While EMC was nominated in several categories, readers voted EMC best in “ disaster recovery and business continuity ” solutions. Also of note is that VFCache was a finalist in the best product of the year.
Check out this video interview with Kelly Brown, filmed from the awards ceremony. As a small side note, Ms. Brown at times Continue Reading
Lady Backup is competitive. I can’t help it. Regardless of the situation, I want to be the best. So there is no doubt why I want to work for a winning team like EMC.
But being part of a winning team isn’t enough. We have to let people know we are the winning team. To this end, EMC has an ad campaign running right now in the Barcelona, Spain airport that simply says “More People Choose EMC Backup.”
We’ve run this ad campaign in various locations around the world. But what does it mean?
There is the most obvious answer: people are buying our products. Partners are selling our products. This is how EMC own 65.5% of the revenue share in the purpose-built backup appliance market, according to IDC.
But from a customer standpoint, in fact they aren’t buying an appliance. They aren’t buying backup technology. What are they choosing?
Confidence.
Customers are buying confidence. They need to know that they can count on their backup technology to work. They need the confidence that the backup was completed properly and stored securely so that they can recover quickly when something goes wrong.
People choose EMC backup because we offer the unique capability to ensure the integrity of the backups – as they are processed and for as long as they are stored on disk.
This might sound obvious, given that really backup is an insurance policy. Of course you need to have confidence in it. Continue Reading
Lady Backup is a bit of a strategist. I like to look forward, to anticipate moves. For this reason, I adore chess – the ability to process a series of “what if” scenarios to make the best decision on your next move.
To all of my fellow strategists in the IT world, this idea of anticipating the next move applies to backup. Backup is a means to an end, where the end state is a business that is confident you can restore applications and recover individual files quickly. While you might be in love with your Continue Reading
Lady Backup is a stickler for tidy work, both grammar and formatting. My employees can vouch for the amount of corrections and comments I make to everything that passes my desk. So of course dotting every “i” is critical…
But in the case of retailer Arcadia Group, they removed tape in the backup of their IBM i environments. These systems run the supply chain applications, along with other mission critical applications – in other words they supply the lifeblood data.
Acardia’s IT staff was finding that their tape-based backup Continue Reading
Posted in: Backup, Energy, Financial Services, IT Transformation, Manufacturing, Public Sector, Virtualisation Industry: Energy, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Public Sector Comments: 0
