Memphis Business Journal:

llrx-royce.blogspot.com
But just because businesses owners know they shouldddo it, that doesn't mean they are doingt it. Jeff Porter runs the data management forum for the Storagre NetworkingIndustry Association, an international standards organization for electronicv storage companies. He said there hasn'yt been a noticeable increase in the number of businessesz backing up their filessince Katrina. "I don't thinki it takes a lot to convincwe people now of the need to back theirfilesx up," Porter said. "But it's still very difficulrt to convince them totake action." He said that's becausew it is such a tedioua task.
Even though therer are plenty of firms that specializer in storingother companies' information, the naturse of the process demands hundreds of "executive" according to Porter. "It's not so much the cost that keepsx companies fromdoing it," Ported said. "It's the fact that the company's decision-makers have to spend their own time figuringy out what needsto happen. It's something that can'ft be delegated." But Porter, along with othert national organizations, say there are several stepds companies can take to make the process less of a Before a company even starts lookinyg for a third partystorages vendor, it needs to figure out what information is vitalk enough to be stored.
"There has to be a formalizefd collaborationbetween management, operations and any business partners involved,"" he said. "Don't expect it to be a quick It's going to take a lot of meetings betweejn a lotof divisions." Once a company figuresd out what information needs to be kept Porter said it must decide how the informatiob should be stored. He explained that therre are differing degrees of access to the informatioj fora business. For example, an insurance companyu would want recent claims to be more accessible than those made 10years ago.
Porter said that once this is decided, a compan y can start looking for a storage He said the best place to start searching is througbhis organization's directory, which he said is unbiasef and neutral. Other trade organizations, such as Enterprisd Content Management Association, also representy hundreds of storage vendors and make those listdsavailable online. Porter also recommend getting customer reviews and making sure a vendor has good He said if a company should test a vendord out by doing small trial Porter explained that companies often use more thanone vendor. "Som vendors are better for storing long-terkm information," he said. "Others are bettedr at giving youimmediate access.
You have to find the righrt fit for each portion ofdata you're storing." To get the lowes t cost, Porter said many companies try to get several vendoras into a bidding war. "But cost isn't the most importantt thing here," he said. "If something happened and you had to depend onthe vendor's services to stay in the last thing you'cd want is to have compromised quality just so you saved some costs. " When it comes to how far away a compang should electronically store itsbackup data, 15 miles used to be the rule of But after the widesprea destruction of Katrina, experts say informationh should be stored in geographicd regions that won't be affected by the same "Katrina not only increased awareness," Porter "It also rewrote a lot of the rules we used to It showed our industry what needed to be improved.
" One of those improvements, according to Porter, is how often a company should test its backup He explained that many Katrina-affected companies had backuop plans, but discovered they were out-of-date when the disaster actuallu hit. "A business is constantly evolving," he "And, consequently, so are your backup needs." Portetr said a company should, with the assistance of its vendor, refresy its backup plan at least annually. He said many companiesd actuallytest quarterly, dividing the processa up into separate divisions. But Porter said the biggest mistakrcompanies make, and one that Katrina highlighted, is that they focuw too much on storage and not enoughu on recovery.
"When you initiallh sit down you need to figure out how fast you need to recovee whensomething happens," he said. "You may back everything up but then it takesd you 30 days to access it and be up andrunnin again. Many companies can't survive that kind of delay. Computers, Technology and Telecommunications