As the Senior Director of Product Marketing and Business Development Jeff is focused on building CommVault's cloud solutions and partner ecosystem to extend customer value using Simpana software.

Prior to joining CommVault, Jeff spent six years at Dell where he worked in a variety of roles including outbound marketing, PowerVault product management and analyst relations.

Jeff has his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

The Future of Disaster Recovery

Friday, October 07, 2011

By Jeff Echols

I admit that my addiction to the TV show Lost makes me more attracted to this week's launch of IT-Lifeline's BlackCloud Edge service. IT-Lifeline is a Business Recovery provider in the Pacific Northwest and is bringing together Amazon Web Services (AWS), CommVault Simpana 9 software and their expertise into a service called BlackCloud Edge. I believe this is a great example of how infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will be leveraged to solve a key problem in the DR industry: Cost.

IT-Lifeline has it right when they cite Business Continuity and DR challenges as the No. 1 priority for the SMB market and that it consumes a healthy component of their IT budget. What is not included here is the number of SMB customers that can't even afford a modern DR solution and are left with the complexity of managing tapes.

Looking at the components of BlackCloud Edge, you can quickly see how each piece of the solution addresses core needs for the SMB:

• Reduced Cost – Data deduplication reduces network and hardware storage costs and will deliver a "pay for what you use" model
• Embedded Security – Encryption secures data before transit, in flight and in the cloud which happens to be SAS 70 type II certified
• Expertise – IT-Lifeline does this for a living and provides their customers with added peace of mind

And finally, let's not forget why there are DR solutions in the first place – rapid data recovery following a disaster. Perhaps the most compelling data provided by IT-Lifeline shows a comparison of traditional server provisioning & recovery times for 50GB environments that indicates their service is 5X faster than traditional user-managed DR techniques.

The stranded islanders of Lost would not be afraid of this BlackCloud.

Jeff Echols is a Senior Director of Product Marketing and Business Development.

Submit a Comment

Please note that your comments will be sent directly to the author of this blog, and will be published upon approval per CommVault's comment policy.

The content of this blog reflects the thoughts and opinions of the author, and does not represent the thoughts, opinions, plans or strategies of CommVault Systems, Inc. ("CommVault") and CommVault undertakes no obligation to update, correct or modify any statements made by the author of this blog. Any and all third party links provided by this blog are not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, CommVault.