Simon leads CommVault's Information Access & Management business including Information Risk, eDiscovery, Compliance and Information Search.

Over the last 20 years he has worked for many large multi-national while building deep expertise in a range of topics including business intelligence, data warehousing, application and information management.

Most recently, Simon has gained specific experience in data retention and archiving, working for or with some of the leading companies in this field to gain specialist knowledge in information risk and compliance.

Does Integrated Backup and Archive Make Sense?

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Guest post from Emily Wojcik

At CommVault, we certainly think so but I honestly can't answer what makes sense for you and your organization. I do know that as a marketer of CommVault's new Simpana OnePass technology, I'm on idiom overload every day.

"Kill two birds with one stone."

"Get more bang for your buck."

"In one fell swoop."

You get the idea. I annoy myself with all this talk but I just don't know how else to describe accomplishing two tasks with only one effort. Specifically, the unification of backup and archive practices into a single process. If you haven't read about Simpana OnePass yet, it's the industry's first converged process for backup, archive and reporting from a single data collection and common infrastructure. It's a technology that enables us to work smarter, not harder in an era characterized by the mantra "do more with less" (here I go again).

Recently, CommVault teamed with Gartner on the report, "Does Integrated Backup and Archiving Make Sense?" to discuss the pros and cons of unifying these activities. While organizations have to answer this question for themselves, I do think the unification of backup and archive starts to make a whole lot of sense, especially as part of a strategy to manage data in a more holistic, cost-effective and risk adverse way. Consider the facts. Big Data growth isn't slowing down. Existing retention requirements will evolve, new ones will appear and few will go away. All this while budgets and resources are staying flat, making a pretty compelling case for combining activities that have long been thought of as complementary anyway.

Certainly, the line between backup and archive is becoming more blurred. Our COO, Al Bunte, even calls it "back-ive." But we have to be careful here. While both provide a copy of information, the intentions behind each are very different. You need a backup copy in the case of a data loss event. An archive is something that has business, compliance or evidentiary value. In the context of Information Governance, it's about not only saving the right data, but getting into the hands of the right people so they can turn it into something more meaningful and actionable for the business.

With Simpana OnePass technology, CommVault lays the foundation to create more value in the information people backup or retain by giving it context. In doing so, they can begin to view data backups and archives more strategically while leveraging a truly integrated solution. Going hand in hand with integrated backup and archive are the alignment and automation of policies with a single collection and central deletion point to further reduce cost, risk and administrative overhead. Yes, at CommVault, we think this is pretty smart stuff.

In its report, Gartner advises "when possible, seek solutions that leverage a common infrastructure." This, again, solves two of the most important information management challenges with one action...optimizing storage efficiencies and meeting eDiscovery and compliance challenges. CommVault alleviates the complexity, cost and risk issues of multiple point products for both backup and archive by offering a single view of all information regardless of where it resides. This packs a "one-two punch" (ugh!) that takes data and information management into a whole new stratosphere, literally providing benefits for every person who interacts with information in the organization.

What do you think? Does combining backup and archive into one process make sense for you? How? Please share your thoughts or favorite cliché with us.

Emily Wojcik is a Product Marketing Manager at CommVault.

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.