October 26, 2007, 1:25 PM — Outsourced data protection is now part of the business backup conversation.
Problematic and often poorly controlled internal corporate backup processes
coupled with maturing backup software and lower storage and network bandwidth
costs from external service providers are resulting in the emergence of managed
service providers (MSPs) that provide backup services. This creates a new corporate
IT challenge: selecting the right MSP to provide corporate backup services.
MSPs make it possible for companies to safely bring backup software into existing
corporate production environments. Select backup software reduces backed up
data footprints by ratios of 10:1 or greater before encrypting and sending the
data to the MSP's site for long term protection. These high data reduction ratios
contribute to the efficient transmission of data over WAN links and data storage
at the MSP's site while the use of agentless backup software such as Asigra's
Televaulting minimizes implementation and installation times at client sites.
Yet the feature that most often appeals to companies is that they can outsource
the responsibility for their backup process to an MSP whose expertise is backup
and recovery. VAALCO Energy's (Houston, TX) IT Specialist, Dereck Stubbs, switched
to NetMass (McKinney,
TX), a backup MSP two years ago, because it enables VAALCO to recover its data
"anyplace, anywhere, and at anytime" and eliminates worries about
managing tapes, backup jobs or data growth. Stubbs says, "It is like having
a backup expert onsite."
These types of benefits are resulting in the emergence of MSPs who offer backup
services that satisfy the needs for three distinct classes of companies and
are quite different from each other.
MSPs focused on:
Consumer and Small and Home Office (SOHO). Cost is a key factor for these backup
Storage Service Providers (SSPs). Backup is the focus versus recovery and is
generally done from a single client site that experiences no more than 15 GB
of changes to its data daily. The primary downside is that data recovery may
take days.
Small to Midsize Business (SMB ). These MSPs are focused on recovery of information
and provide more complex and expansive infrastructures to support this focus.
They can support data volumes of up to 3 TB of changed data daily and multiple
operating system platforms. Recovery times are typically in the range of 24
to 72 hours.
Small to Large Enterprise. Offered by fewer MSPs, enterprise-class business
continuity services are recognized by their emphasis on providing fast recovery
in the event of a disaster - less than 24 hours. Daily enterprise customer data
volumes can far exceed 3 TB and the MSP must support a variety of operating
system platforms and offer multiple recovery options. Application recoveries
need to occur in less than 24 hours and the MSP may need to support the failover
and recoveries of specific customer applications at their site.
The availability of multiple MSPs for each customer class is resulting in differentiators
that extend beyond how MSPs protect and recover corporate data to what other
services they offer and even how -- and from whom -- users can buy an MSP's
core backup service. The MSP's choice and implementation of backup software,
data center infrastructure and recovery options are key features that companies
should examine to ensure the MSP meets their requirements. Delivering on corporate
recovery point and time objectives, supporting different corporate data retention
periods and managing fluctuations in daily corporate data change rates are key
variables that companies should include as part of their decision making process.
Evaluating MSPs
MSPs that offer backup services generally self-classify themselves according
to one of these three categories -- SOHO, SMB or enterprise -- so determining
which class an MSP falls into is generally as simple as asking the MSP or reviewing
its web site or product literature. To make an informed decision as to which
MSP a company should select is based on other criteria not so immediately evident.
One criterion that companies should evaluate is each MSP's potential for handling
future growth. MSPs may differ significantly in the total number of physical
sites that it manages, how much total data it manages and how it grows and manages
its infrastructure as the total amount of data it receives from its clients
fluctuates and grows.
