lackouts. Electrical storms. Human goof-ups.
They all can kill data.
That's especially true now that so much critical data is stored on midrange systems, network and Web servers, and desktops. That, in turn, is why many organizations are taking more precautions to protect distributed data and processing capabilities.
Companies have protected their big centralized data centers with backup and recovery services for years. But now, many are expanding that coverage to protect distributed systems and networks, too.
Vendors are rushing in. Comdisco Continuity Services
has 250 customers using its excess bandwidth to back up server-to-server and server-to-host networks, says David Nolan, president of the Rosemont, Ill., company. To meet what is expected to be growing demand for protection of distributed data, Comdisco will introduce new backup and recovery services over the next two years, Nolan adds. Another vendor, Data Base Inc. in Seattle, offers similar services.
A growing number of organizations are putting in place business-continuity plans for their distributed facilities and networks. According to a survey conducted by InformationWeek and Ernst & Young last October, nearly 70% of companies include LANs in their business continuity plans, up from 50% the year before.
Some users are setting up business-continuity plans for their distributed offices. J&H Marsh & McLennan Inc., a New York insurance firm, subscribes to a new Comdisco service that lets the insurer use Comdisco's local computing facilities if any of its 50 distributed offices in 35 U.S. locations
are incapacitated by a disaster. "This gives us alternative processing sites similar to our own, with PCs, LANs, and voice connectivity," says Emil D'Angelo, head of information protection at J&H Marsh & McLennan. "In the event of a disaster, we go into the site and install our data on their systems and continue processing."
While D'Angelo declined to say how much his company is paying for the service, he says having national instead of regional coverage makes it cost-justifiable, "especially considering the risk of what we'd lose and how long we'd be out in the event of a disaster."
Earlier this month, Comdisco unveiled a service called Mobile Recovery Solutions that provides custom-designed trailers that can accommodate up to 250 desktops and 50 servers. It also gives users their own power supply and even satellite hookups for data transmission.
Many companies are taking steps to ensure that distributed data is continuously backed up. "We try to treat data on the LANs the same as data on the ma
inframe, in terms of backup," says Steve Glick, manager of networking and distributed computing at the Dallas County School System in Mesquite, Texas. "We back up NetWare, Unix, and NT servers every night. Users are responsible for backing up their own computers."
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lackouts. Electrical storms. Human goof-ups.
