How efficient is your backup?

[GFK]

Keep your business up and running - by discovering backup and storage management inefficiencies you can cut costs, while making sure that your data is fully protected. Highly beneficial at a time when budgets are under strain.

It is really useful to go through the process of trying to find out:

• How well your data is protected

• If you are missing backing up critical data
• How prepared you are for increasing data volumes
• Whether your strategy supports business growth or lowers performance
• If you are taking advantage of the most cost-effective solutions available

It never ceases to amaze me how well we don’t know ourselves. To quote Polonius, “unto thine own self be true”; the more honest you are with yourself the more accurate and the more useful the results will be. We know our business, don’t we? We know that we are doing the best we can, aren’t we? It’s not like someone is trying to catch you out - give it a go, there are some pretty simple questions you can ask yourself just to get going, simply because the world has moved on, the drivers for improving backup and recovery operations are ever stricter:

• How can you keep business-critical applications running, delivering improved ROI, while complying with regulations
• How can you justify spending in times of budgetary constraint by demonstrating the quality and effectiveness of your systems
• What is the best way to convince business users of the importance of investing in backup solutions, before data is lost, while also establishing what should be backed up - and why
• How confident are you that you can cover all your IT service requirements? If you are not very confident - how not confident are you, 25%, 50%, or do you stick to all your business service agreements?
• What level of backup reporting do you have that allows you to justify future IT investment to optimise your recovery time objectives? Is there a requirement for reporting metrics, occasionally, or more regularly?
• How confident are you that your main business managers understand the importance of backup? Most of us take backup for granted but how confident are you that your backup policy covers all areas of the business?

Are you confident that you have the right backup and recovery systems in place and are getting the most out of them? A backup and recovery, or storage, assessment will highlight areas of weakness but also help to identify where Backup Exec can improve efficiencies and save you money.