05/ 30/ 2007
by Chris Stakutis, CTO and Inventor, CDP for Files, IBM
Only a few years ago, the average office worker was assigned a space on a server that was automatically backed up daily. Crucial documents like accounting charts and quarterly statements lived on file servers, and workers were able to simply access these documents from their computers.
Today's computers are far more mobile and have vastly larger disks--acting as sponges for volumes of data--holding both critical business documents, as well as personal files like mp3s, movies and photo libraries. The massive increase in available data space is intoxicating, especially to the mobile user.
With the available disk data space in computers continuing to grow exponentially, the business user has become more independent from the company's IT department and, therefore, more at risk for data loss.
Big and small organizations include a large percentage of mobile workers, equipped with laptops that can connect wirelessly, but are frequently disconnected from the network. In fact, Gartner predicts that, in 2007, there will be more than 60 million people teleworking worldwide. Mobile workers add complexity to business IT administration because, unlike PCs tethered to a network, mobile workers are often disconnected from the network and their connectivity cannot be controlled or planned. Gartner predicts that nearly 80 percent of small business' critical data now resides, not on the company's internal network, but on employee laptops.
It's impractical to back up daily or hourly changes to a CD, and a mobile employee's IT department can't capture data changes to a server if a computer is disconnected from the network. The most important time to protect a file is during the time of active creation or alteration. Mobile employees edit, add and manipulate so many different files and documents in a single day that is nearly impossible to back up every change while on the road. This unique problem requires a solution that is inexpensive and easy to use.
Luckily, a new style of data protection and backup has emerged. Continuous data protection software solutions provide real-time data backup and constant protection of information from computer viruses, file corruption, accidental deletion or theft of a laptop. This new type of software captures and saves changes to documents continuously to a computer hard drive and sends a copy of the information to a remote server, flash drive, external hard drive or online storage service for double protection--all within milliseconds. If information on the hard drive is compromised, mobile workers can restore information that otherwise would be lost, with just a few clicks of the mouse.
The philosophy behind continuous data protection is something like this: When a document changes, it makes an immediate local copy to a nearby network file server. If the laptop is not connected to the server at the time of change the information automatically backs up locally to the computer's hard drive until the next connection is established. Continuous data protection automates the “save” process that employees should have been doing manually for years, but seldom did. The combination of a rolling hard-drive backup along with an additional network, flash or disk backup, safeguards against machine failures, viruses and theft.
Already businesses and individual consumers are beginning to embrace this new method of backup. New continuous data protection software solutions on the market are extremely affordable, available through online retailers, and the investment pays for itself the moment a computer crashes. These solutions are usually simple to set up and employees don't have to spend countless hours trying to configure the software. The value of continuous data protection software is low cost and high return, allowing businesses to protect all critical data, even their employees' mp3 files and family photos.
From corporate executives to mobile salesforce and even consumers, the value of the data on personal computers has soared. Failure to invest in a continuous data backup solutions is the equivalent of not using anti-virus software; it's a risk too high not to take.
About the author
Chris Stakutis is IBM's CTO for emerging storage software and inventor of IBM's Continuous Data Protection for Files software. Chris is a prominent data storage industry technologist and visionary with more than 20 years of experience and over a dozen patents in data storage management. Chris is also a published author of two data- and storage-related books.
