The Top 14 Questions to Ask Backup/Storage Analysis Companies

Posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 by Ian Smith

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Organisations often ask us how they can evaluate suppliers of backup/storage analysis and migration and we have seen different approaches to this problem.  Many offerings don’t make it clear how they’re going to work or what effect they will have on your business, your staff and your systems.  By asking a few simple questions, you [...]

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The top 12 reasons you need a backup/storage analysis & migration strategy

Posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2011 by Ian Smith

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In our conversations with customers, we’ve found out the most common reasons they’ve identified that they need to implement a backup or storage analysis and migration strategy. You may identify with some or all of these – let us know what you think: You’re running more than one legacy backup system. You’ve got a mix [...]

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How do an orange, a monkey and a bicycle give you consolidated storage?

Posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2011 by Ian Smith

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OK, it’s an attention grabbing headline – but it’s there to illustrate a problem that many data centre managers face on a daily basis.  In the data centre world the orange, monkey and bicycle get replaced by their technological counterparts: legacy systems, scheduled activities and the latest and greatest technology. Legacy systems and scheduled activities [...]

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Migration Planning – Dreams Really Do Come True!

Posted on Monday, May 16th, 2011 by Marcus Witts

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I remember being involved in a migration project that seemed to go on forever – 150TB or so allocated to about 100 hosts that needed migrating from a legacy environment to a shiny new virtualised environment. Shouldn’t take too long, right? It’s only 150TB…say 3 months? Well, after 12 months we still hadn’t finished. There [...]

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Is the circus coming to town?

Posted on Friday, April 15th, 2011 by Ian Smith

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I’ve never seen a satisfied customer with an agent-based analysis tool.  But why is that? Traditional analytics products use agent based technology and require a widespread deployment approach.  Although the potential for accuracy is 100%, the typical accuracy realised is commonly significantly less than this. The agent deployment and management creates a significant overhead on [...]

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The TV Repair Man

Posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2011 by Ian Smith

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When I was a boy, I remember our top-loading VHS video and the drama when the TV was broken.  I remember the guy in the overalls with the white van, who would turn up – the TV repair man. He had tools, screwdrivers, pliers, tape and soldering irons – very cool for a 5 year [...]

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Downturn in Economy Drives Innovation

Posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 by Ian Smith

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Strangely the economic downturn has had a positive effect on innovation – which we are now reaping the benefits from as we start to see some light at the end of the business tunnel. Recession causes panic and panic causes business inhibition as companies batten down the hatches, cut overheads and focus on making and [...]

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Tech Innovation – Consumer Driven

Posted on Monday, February 21st, 2011 by Ian Smith

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Technology has evolved from corporate driven down to consumers to consumer driven back to corporate. Is this a positive effect for corporate development?

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“Bit Rot” a term compliancy regulations forgot to read

Posted on Monday, January 17th, 2011 by Ian Smith

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Compliance, regulations, business security, historical trends, research and retrieval – no matter why business information is stored for years, old technology such as tapes and removable storage suffer from bit rot. A term used to define the decay of physical media. It is easy to imagine that magnetic tape, a material made from plastic tape [...]

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Off-site & inter-country archiving more crucial in the face of increasing natural disasters

Posted on Monday, January 17th, 2011 by Ian Smith

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“Australia floods cause months of disruptions.” When I heard about this disaster I was, like everyone I knew, amazed at the extent of the damage and the size of the area covered by the flooding.  What grabbed my attention in the report from Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLNE70303W20110107) was the quote from the chief of the flood recovery [...]

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