InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
January 11, 1999
Backup Plans Become Criticalcontinued...page 2 of 2
The company started using Connected Corp.'s Online Backup program for its remote users last year. The system automates data backup for remote users and lets them recover data quickly. What Corinha likes best about this process is that it's done with a minimal amount of data moving across the company's intranet. For example, if one employee saves an Excel spreadsheet and then changes one cell in that spreadsheet, Online Backup would back up only the data that had been changed. GTE Internetworking saves all versions of its files for three years.
"The product totally empowers end users," Corinha says. "They don't have to put in a call to the help desk to recover a lost file or a different version of a file. They can ask the system themselves for any version of a file that they want and get it by themselves."
GTE Internetworking has also introduced Legato Systems' NetWorker for its workstation and server backups. NetWorker 5.5, released last fall, supports additional computing environments, including Novell NetWare 5, and Sun Solaris 7, and offers increased scalability, availability, and performance. Its new "save set consolidation" feature consolidates incremental backups into a full backup.
Cross-Platform Support
Another problem for companies is backing up data created in applications running on several different operating systems.
Exide Electronics Group Inc., a Raleigh, N.C., company that sells uninterruptible power supply systems, runs Sun Solaris, Windows NT, and OS/400 operating systems. For its backup needs, Exide chose Computer Associates' ArcServe 6.5 and Unicenter TNG 2.1 with Advanced Storage Option, which provides one interface for backing up data from all of its operating systems.
Unicenter TNG monitors all data sources and lets the company manage its backups from one location. So if data in one site is being backed up and something goes wrong, the ArcServe administrator will be alerted and can fix the problem remotely and notify staff at the site that there was a problem. Exide backs up all data to tapes, which are picked up and stored each night in an off-site fireproof vault.
The company needed to back up files and E-mail created in applications running on all of its platforms quickly and reliably because the company relies on E-mail and Excel spreadsheets for critical financial information. When Exide was acquired by British Tire and Rubber in November 1997, it was forced to reduce the time it took to close its financial books from 21 days to two because of British financial reporting requirements. With such a tight deadline, the company couldn't afford a two- or three-day delay in recovering E-mail messages.
"E-mail has become critical to our business, and we couldn't afford to lose any information, especially with our new time constraints," says Exide CIO Irv Barnes. "From my standpoint, having a reliable backup and recovery strategy means having a job--because if our systems go down and we can't backup or recover the data, I guarantee I won't be working here."
Analysts predict that over the next few years, the use of Internet technologies in core business applications will lead to software solutions that let IT departments and individual users back up data faster and provide data management in addition to protection. They attribute this to the growing use of notebook computers and the 24-hour convenience of the Internet.
Enhancements in software, not hardware, are driving improvements in backup and recovery, says Raymond Freeman, president of research firm Freeman & Associates. "Eventually, the Internet will be a critical component to every corporation's backup strategies."
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