Disaster Recovery Experts Speak Out

THE ARCHIVE:
Roundtable Discussion: Implementing A Disaster-Recovery Plan
(with an emphasis on storage and data replication)

This online event was held Nov. 7-9, 2001. What follows is an archive of the discussion and the introductory explanation.

Companies have realized the importance of disaster-recovery plans. IT managers want to ensure their data is protected and accessible, but many are uncertain of the options available. They may not be sure of the right questions to ask, or how to put together a plan that will really work, or what plan best suits their requirements and budgetary constraints.

To address these questions and more, we drew together the people who think about these topics every day, who have watched disaster-recovery plans that succeeded and those that have failed -- and we let those experts share their wisdom.

What We're Up To
For this roundtable, we asked an industry analyst and representatives from storage and data-replication companies to donate their time and expertise to customers who are interested in implementing a disaster-recovery plan. InformationWeek senior editor Martin J. Garvey moderated the forum.

The Guest Panel
The Standish Group: James H. Johnson, Chairman
James (Jim) H. Johnson has been professionally involved in the computer industry for more than 30 years and has a long list of published papers, articles, and speeches. He is the founder and chairman of The Standish Group, a well-known research advisory firm. He has a combination of technical, marketing, and research achievements focused on mission-critical applications and technology. Best known for his research on project and system availability management, Jim pioneered modern research techniques and continues to advance the research industry through virtual focus groups and case-based analytical technology.

NSI Software: Bob Guilbert, VP of Marketing
Bob Guilbert is responsible for the NSI Software's branding, marketing strategies, programs, and personnel worldwide. He works closely with the sales and development departments in forming worldwide marketing strategies for the company's award-winning Double-Take and GeoCluster software offerings.

BMC Software: Rick Weaver, Product Manager, OS/390 Recovery & Storage Mgmt.
Rick Weaver is a Certified Business Continuity Planner with more than 25 years of experience in systems and database administration for IMS, DB2, and Distributed System database systems. He has been involved in developing large, complex, mission-critical applications in a variety of business areas. A special area of expertise is support of backup and recovery for enterprisewide applications, exploiting the advances in hardware and software technology to produce cost-effective recovery solutions.

SteelEye: Bob Williamson, VP of Engineering
Bob Williamson leads SteelEye's product research, development, and delivery process. He has more than 20 years of experience in software, technology, disaster recovery, and high-availability related projects on Unix and Windows NT platforms, with a recent emphasis on Linux. Before joining SteelEye, Bob managed numerous projects during his 18 years tenure at NCR Corp. in the communications, performance, high-availability, and E-commerce areas.

FalconStor Software, Inc.: Wayne Lam, VP of Marketing
Wayne Lam, co-founder of FalconStor, has more than 15 years of software development and corporate management experience. He presently serves as vice chairman and PR coordinator for SNIA IPS Forum iSCSI Group, and also co-chair of SNIA IPS Technical Workgroup iSCSI Group. Before FalconStor, he was VP at Computer Associates, holding various roles in product marketing, business, and product development.

Fujitsu Softek: Scott Kennedy, VP, Storage Solutions
Scott Kennedy launched the most successful vendor-independent data migration product in the industry: TDMF. He and his marketing team managed the development and launch of this industry standard for enterprise data migration. TDMF is a $100M product with 400 customers worldwide. In his former position as director of SAN products for Amdahl Software, he followed the same methodologies to successfully develop and launch SAN technology to meet customer requirements.

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