According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, hackers are becoming increasingly brazen and are widening the scope of their targets. While hackers once picked on companies that stored financial data or housed classified government information, they’re increasingly breaking into firms that don’t fit that profile. For instance, over the weekend “hactivists” posted a fake article on the web site for the PBS show “News Hour” in retaliation for a documentary called “WikiSecrets.” READ MORE
It’s official: humanity is creating more digitized data each year than places to archive it. It’s no wonder that so many technology companies are jumping on the band wagon to build massive data storage facilities. Even in this economy, data storage is a red hot business. That’s not likely to change given a recent study put out by IDC Research earlier this year projecting that the amount of digital data will increase tenfold by 2011. Finding a place to put all our information is one challenge. But there’s another problem that looms just as large, especially for the small to midsize business with limited IT resources. “Archiving is less about where to put data and more about getting it back when you need it,” says Andrew Reichman, a senior analyst from Forrester Research. To quote the Old Bard himself, “Therein lies the rub.” How to organize and retrieve The big problem for most companies is organizing its data in the first place and then finding the best strategies for retrieval. “Typically where they go wrong is that they start out with one, two, five people in the business sharing one drive and now it’s 10 years later with more than 20 people all dumping their files into that same drive with no thought to organization,” says Matt Dubois, managing partner of D2 Business Solutions in Costa Mesa, Calif. Dubois would know. His company is often called in to clean up the mess. “We can spend up to two weeks full-time straightening it out. It’s not just confusing folders and subfolders or missing files that cause confusion. We had one client, a law firm, with an attorney frustrated that his file had not been updated by another employee. The employee claimed the file had been updated. They were both right. The problem was there was a duplicate file and they were working off two versions without realizing it,” says Dubois. So for the business looking to spring clean their data storage, Dubois offers the following steps: Develop a naming structure. Does this sound familiar? One employee leaves and his/her replacement inherits a Byzantine filing system of oddly named folders and files that have no bearing on its content or importance. It may seem cute to name all your file folders after NFL teams. But what does that have to do with accounts receivable? Business managers need to establish a protocol for naming folders and files that make sense and that are literal enough that anyone can jump in and find what they need, when they need it. “It needs to make sense. It needs to have some logical structure,” says Dubois. Backup your data before you start. “When you’re ripping things up, things are bound to get lost,” says Dubois. Additionally as a company dissects its share drives, it’s not likely to know exactly what it has anyway. It’s wise to keep a back-up copy on hand just in case someone needs to go back and find something that got lost in the shuffle. Chunk it down. Don’t clean up your filing system all at once. Dubois recommends doing it one department at a time. For example, start with accounting, and then move on perhaps to sales. Prioritize which departments need a digital intervention the most. Reorganize files by department. As data is teased out and organized one department at a time that is likely the best way to structure it in the future — by department. “Give all your employees access to the ‘S’ drive – ‘S’ for share — but limit who has access to which files. Typically, only two people or so need access to each folder,” says Dubois. Bottom line: the fewer people with access to a file system, the fewer people with the ability to spiral it out of control again. It also makes it easier to hold employees accountable for sticking with the naming protocols. Tagging. The vast majority of small to mid-sized businesses these days are using Microsoft Sharepoint, which allows assigning tags and meta tags for search and retrieval. For companies storing their data on a third party “cloud,” chances are the cloud computing provider is using Sharepoint, as well, or a similar solution. Just like employers need to have naming protocols, there should be tagging protocols, as well, with suggested key words for certain types of data. Where to put it all According to a recent study by EMC, 53 percent of all small businesses are still backing up their data on tape. This can’t be very efficient when it comes time to find a file from three years ago that is now buried in a tape rack with a whole other filing system that may or may not make sense. Tape is out, digital storage is in. Dubois sees most of his clients centralizing its data through products like Microsoft Sharepoint. Sharepoint is bundled in with Microsoft’s line of small business servers each costing just under $1,000. Businesses also have the option of storing their data with third party storage providers. Big name companies like Amazon and Google are renting space on their clouds at prices affordable to smaller businesses. There are countless smaller data storage vendors, as well. All have the added advantage of being off site. So if your building burns down or becomes inaccessible due to weather or a local disaster, the business can be up and running from a remote location. Businesses shopping for a third party storage provider should be mindful of the features important for their business. How much space is needed? How often will it be accessed and by how many? What kind of security measures are in place to protect the data? How sophisticated are the retrieval tools to pull up files and can they be customized for your businesses specific needs? If that sounds like a lot of questions to answer, consider this: it beats trying to find last year’s invoices under that Dallas Cowboy folder.
According to Gartner, roughly two thirds of all servers sold are shipped with Microsoft’s server software. Each generation is more powerful and sophisticated in what it can handle, the latest being the highly anticipated release of Microsoft Server 2008 that came out in February of this year. For the smaller business, prices start around $1,000 for the standard version and just under $500 for the no frills Web-only server application. Depending on the company’s size and budget, those Windows-based servers can be a major expense. It probably wouldn’t please the average business owner to know those servers, for all that sophistication and computing power, are likely running at less than 20 percent utilization. In other words, imagine a rack of five servers totaling over $5,000 in software and collectively they are running at the full capacity of just one of those servers, while the power of four servers sits idle and unused. “Windows servers have become more powerful over the years. Most applications just don’t require all that extra power,” says Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics based in Irvine, Calif. Scavo points to Unix and Linux servers as more efficient running at about 50 percent utilization — significantly better than Microsoft, but still woefully under used as a resource. The much-talked about trend, virtualization, is one way to get more bang out of your server bucks. But there are more reasons to virtualize, as you’ll see below. Virtualization 101 Traditionally, IT departments organize their servers by task. Typically there’s an e-mail server, a file server, perhaps an accounting server, and even a server for all the printing. With virtualization, tasks are handled across multiple machines and even platforms, instead of the one task, one box approach. “Think about it at the desktop level. The more applications that are open, the more likely it’s going to freeze up and crash. You don’t need that on your servers,” says Scavo. To the end user, the alternative is a seamless experience. Virtualization happens on the backend. It’s the ability to integrate resources, leverage them together to handle a single functionality, and all but eliminate down time since one server covers for another if there’s a problem. A company might use multiple servers to replicate a backup data base off site or handle more complex applications. These days, virtualization is often mentioned in the same breath as cloud computing. To make a distinction between the two, cloud computing is a data grid of perhaps thousands of computing devices used as needed by outside users and organizations. It’s a nimble way to scale up and down with user demands. Virtualization is the programming that handles the mechanics of that. Virtualization is not limited to cloud computing, which is virtualization on a grand scale. Smaller organizations can take advantage of this strategy on a much smaller scale with as little as only a few servers involved on site. Whether its through a subscription based service with a cloud computing provider, like Amazon.com’s new Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, or implementing some virtual machine software (VMWare) on site, virtualization is quickly becoming a very attractive option for businesses and organizations of all sizes. Here’s why: Increase server utilization. As highlighted by Scavo, this is the heart and soul of virtualization. Getting the most out of your available computing power to accomplish whatever the task may be, whether it’s creating redundancies or enabling the network to handle more complex applications by allowing them to multi task across multiple appliances. Decrease spending. Virtualization saves money by requiring fewer servers to do more. “Through virtualization, companies can consolidate their server population on average by 25 percent. I know of one company that went from 18 servers to three and saved $90,000,” says James Browning, a vice president of research at Gartner Conserve energy. Servers and computers generate a lot of heat and at the same time easily break down if they aren’t kept almost refrigerator cool at all times. There’s a reason why IT professionals tend to wear long sleeves year round. The data room is typically chillier than football in November. With the rising costs of utility bills as a factor for every business right now, virtualization can be a fast track to big savings. That same company noted by Browning that saved $90,000 by reducing its number of servers; saved another $10,000 annually in utility bills. Safeguard data. Archiving data and replicating the network off site through virtualization is a recipe for an all but bullet-proof disaster recovery plan. Plus, it’s competitively priced compared to some of the other popular backup choices for small to midsize companies, like using a storage area network (SAN) or disc to disc backup. Increased flexibility. As mentioned already, by automating computing tasks across multiple sources, the likelihood of downtime is almost non-existent. If one source fails, another picks up the slack. Additionally, the IT department no longer has to be married to one single platform. “With virtual servers, you can run multiple operating systems, like Windows and Linux, on the same physical server,” points out Scavo. SIDEBAR: Getting started Every company’s computing needs are different and no one understands those unique needs better than the IT staff or consultant already managing the network. Business owners should encourage them to research virtualization, looking at case studies of what it’s done for organizations of similar size and corporate mission. Scavo highly recommends laying out the investment for a little training, as well. Send your IT manager to a conference or have a client representative from one of the VMWare vendors, like EMC, come on site to demonstrate what their product can do. As for Microsoft and those Windows servers running at 20 percent capacity, those days might soon be over with the release of Hyper-V when it comes out later in 2008. Hyper-V technology, designed to partition virtual functions away from the processor, is Microsoft’s VMWare solution to get more out of their servers. At a thousand dollars a pop for entry level versions of Server 2008, that’s a good thing.
Salesforce.com is one of the technology industry’s more recent Cinderella stories. Less than a decade ago, it was just another Silicon Valley startup operating out of the home of its founder, Mark Benioff, with three employees, $6 million of his own seed money and an idea that was the laughing stock of the business section. Some implied he had his head in the clouds and in a way, he did. Benioff, a former Oracle executive, had a vision to develop software, but not sell it. Instead his customer relationship management (CRM) applications would be offered on a subscription basis while empowered and housed on his company’s maze of servers and computers (euphemistically referred to as a “cloud”), not to mention storing and securing the entire body of client data created in its wake. CRM applications, formerly cost prohibitive for small to mid-sized businesses, would now be affordable, scalable and turnkey living on Salesforce.com’s more robust data grid than the more limited networks of its clients. Back in 1999, that idea was considered voodoo. Critics at the time predicted companies would never be willing to offload control of such core business applications. Pioneer in cloud computing In 2008, the now publicly traded company has more than one million subscribers from its 41,000 subscribing companies and works in partnership with some of the biggest names in technology and on Wall Street. As for the power of the company’s data grid or “cloud,” there are now days it accommodates more than 100 million user requests. “Salesforce.com is a really a pioneer in cloud computing. It identified a specific need; that it’s hard for a small to midsize business to manage a CRM system. With Salesforce.com, now those same companies only need a web browser. It’s effective and it addresses a clear pain point,” says Andrew Reichman, a senior analyst from Forrester Research. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), data centers, Web-based applications and virtualization, along with cloud computing, are some of the most over used and misunderstood buzz words floating around in business technology circles these days. They all have one thing in common: they are often confused in various combinations as the same thing. Though similar, they are not interchangeable terms. “It’s easy to confuse. From the standpoint of the user, there isn’t a difference between cloud computing or SaaS or Web-based applications,” says Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics, based in Irvine, Calif. Historically, jobs requiring serious computing power have been performed by powerful mainframes, supercomputers, and over the past two decades increasingly by the ever more capable desktop or laptop PC souped up with the latest and most powerful microchips, RAM and sophisticated operating system that can run multiple applications simultaneously. Cloud computing is the alternative to all that high powered computing generating from one place. Cloud computing, instead, takes place within a integrated ballet of algorithms and code among cheaper, low powered computers and servers and third party networks “out there.” What IT types eventually started referring to as “the cloud” and what is increasingly becoming the platform of choice for many companies who no longer want the headache or expense of housing and maintaining all that cumbersome computing. Coming to terms So how is this different from all those other terms mentioned? Here’s a quick primer: Software-as-a-service: This is the business model, an alternative to the generations old business model of marketing software by selling usage rights with an “end user license agreement” (EULA). Web-based application: This tells you where the software lives. Traditionally, software applications have lived on a centralized mainframe or server or on the individual user’s PC. Web-based applications live on the Internet and are accessed with a Web browser through a password protected website. Data centers: A data center is the physical location of a farm of servers and computers. Data clouds are typically much bigger, involving perhaps thousands of computers across data centers around the globe. Clouds are automated. Data Centers involve human management. Virtualization: This is the programming mechanics of optimizing and integrating servers to act in concert as one external interface for the end user. It’s a great way to create redundancies, maximize the equipment’s efficiency and conserve energy. The benefits of cloud computing While Salesforce.com has proven itself a success serving small to mid-sized businesses by delivering CRM from the cloud, the cloud computing trend has hardly hit its tipping point. Here are some of the reasons many industry watchers say it’s only a matter of time: Save money. Through the business model of SaaS, applications living on the cloud are much cheaper for companies. Organizations save on the expense of implementation, maintenance, and security while benefiting from the economy of scale a massive “cloud” can offer compared to even a large company network. Access to more sophisticated applications. Salesforce.com is a great example of this with its offering of CRM tools to smaller businesses, whereas before CRM was completely out of reach for most modest budgets. Downsize the IT department. The more applications that are farmed out to a cloud, the fewer that have to live on the company network. That translates to fewer bodies for deployment, upkeep and updates, as well as less hardware in the building and less square footage taken up in the office. Saving energy. This is a factor on everyone’s mind given the economy, concerns for the environment and the growing energy crisis. “No one really thought about it up until now. But there’s a real focus on power, cooling and space because there’s a general mood of concern over energy costs,” says Reichman. Saving data. “Cloud computing relieves the smaller business from things like backup and recovery, which most don’t do a good job of doing anyway,” says Scavo. Any company big enough to provide data cloud services is likely to have more infrastructure to handle data security than the average small to midsize business. SIDEBAR: Cloud Computing Vendors Amazon EC2 — A funny thing happened on the way to becoming the biggest bookstore on the Internet. First, Amazon expanded to selling just about everything else available in retail making it the virtual Sears and Roebuck of the new millennium. More recently, with the launch of EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), which is still in beta, Amazon has revealed what is likely its long term business plan; to become the cloud service provider of choice for small businesses at affordable rates. Google — was perhaps the first company to build itself from the ground up as a data cloud, spending billions of dollars each year on additional servers and PC’s. There is no mother data center at Google headquarters running all those algorithims to conduct lightening fast searches while hosting email, dynamic calendaring and collaborative office applications. Google’s cloud is estimated to involve over one million PC’s and servers parceled out around the world. It’s only natural that they would monetize access to their subscribers. EMC Cloud — EMC is another one of the clouds gathering as this emerging market creates more buzz. The first tip off was the acquisition of online storage provider Mozy and more recently the startup cloud company, Pi Corporation. Pi stands for personal information. Cloud computing would be a natural progression for EMC, as it is one of the most popular vendors when it comes to virtual machine software (VMWare). Windows Live — Nothing could be more counter to Microsoft’s core mission than embracing and enhancing cloud computing. After all, Microsoft made its bones (and billions) selling software licenses by the seat and pushing its increasingly powerful Windows browser version after version. But clearly the folks in Redmond have seen the writing on the wall from the strong interest of web-based services like Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Salesforce.com. Windows Live is in the early stages of what industry watchers refer to tongue in cheek as the Windows Cloud O/S 3Tera — It’s a small company, but based on open source solutions and with its own patented Applogic technology is now in the process of rolling out its CloudWare services in stages. IBM’s Blue Cloud — It’s also still in the process of rolling out and is based on open source code. It could prove too pricey for smaller businesses, appealing more to the budgets of mid-sized and enterprise level companies.
March 1, 2008: a laptop containing unsecured confidential data is stolen from an employee’s car, endangering the privacy and financial well-being of thousands of people — and a company’s reputation. Feel like you’ve read this before? Once only the stuff of nightmares, this unfortunate scenario has become almost commonplace. In this latest instance, the laptop belonged to an employee of San Jose, Calif.-based Stock & Option Solutions (SOS), a stock-plan manager and subcontractor to Agilent Technologies Inc., of Santa Clara, Calif., a life-sciences and measurement firm. The laptop contained a database listing the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of 51,000 Agilent employees, retirees, and stakeholders, as well as information about their stock holdings. Despite a strict Agilent database-encryption policy, which covered SOS as well, the laptop version was unencrypted, confirms Agilent spokeswoman Amy Flores. “They blew it,” she says simply. Cautionary tale about databases This latest case should serve as yet another cautionary tale. Data such as Social Security or credit card numbers are not only crucial to a business, they are worth their weight in gold to those in the identity theft racket. Moreover, compliance with regulatory mandates, such as Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, requires companies, and their contractors, to keep an airtight lock on relevant data if they want to win and maintain lucrative business deals. And yet, database administrators (DBAs) probably only spend 7 percent of their time tending to database security, estimates Noel Yuhanna, principal analyst for database security at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. If anything, DBAs spend more time trying to increase internal access to a company’s database, so that it can be used optimally by the accounting or sales staff. And for small businesses, where the DBA could have countless other duties, too, the problem might be greater. Sometimes insiders at fault Which brings us to another tough statistic — a January 2007 Forrester Research report estimated that 70 percent of all database breaches involve insiders. Even those employees who administer the database need to be viewed as potential risks to its safety. Awareness of the scope of this problem is growing, however. A separate Forrester study found in October 2007 that enterprise spending on database security and auditing is likely to double by 2010 to nearly $900 million annually. What should a small or mid-sized business do to protect its database? Here are some tips from the experts: What’s Your Risk? “If your database is on the Internet, you have to protect it from hackers. Even if not, you have to protect it from insiders. And then you need to consider the laptops, thumbdrives, anything else that can include the data,” says Sushil Jajodia, professor of information technology and director of secure information systems at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va. Figure out the scope of your risk first. Conduct a Vulnerability Assessment. Tools are out there that can help you check how well your existing systems work to protect your database. Products such as Imperva’s Scuba, an open-source assessment tool, can point out flaws in existing programs. How Many Databases Exactly? Make sure you track down any and all copies of your company’s databases that might be floating around. There may be more copies than you think, so make sure they are all found and eventually protected. Develop a Clear Policy…and Stick to It. “Insiders need to know what they can and cannot do” with critical information, and how it should be stored, says Jajodia. “They need to understand the policy and know what will happen if it’s violated. Usually, that’s enough and people will do the right thing.” Insiders can include not only employees, but third-party contractors, too. Go Shopping for New Tools. DBAs should seek out the newest database security releases instead of relying on what’s on their systems now, says Forrester’s Yuhanna. For example, the latest offerings from Oracle, IBM, SQLServer, and Guardium offer far more advanced features. Guardium’s appliance, for example, features continuous tracking of all database activity, including failed logins, and includes an email alert service that can let others know of any suspicious activity. Make Sure the Tools Get Used. Make sure any software is properly installed. If encryption software for laptops is purchased, make sure it’s installed on every laptop in the office. In a recent case involving a laptop theft from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) employee, the laptop was not encrypted despite the existence of a U.S.-government-wide encryption policy, notes Jajodia. Control Access. Only certain employees should have access to the office database, and those employees who need only parts of the database to do their work should only have access to those parts. Products such as Applimation’s Informia subsetting solution or EMC’s Database Xtender can ensure that the sales force, for instance, only sees the specific data they need and nothing more. Don’t Give DBAs Sole Responsibility. Remember that most database breaches happen from the inside, so make sure someone is checking up on the DBA, too, notes GMU’s Jojodia. “This is the typical weakness, where a separation of duties isn’t followed,” he says. “There have to be checks and balances,” Newer product offerings can help by ensuring that even DBAs cannot make changes without notice. Handle Old Data with Care. Develop a solid strategy for storing databases that have outlived their usefulness, or old equipment containing such data. Remember that even old data can be misused if in the wrong hands. To store sensitive data, consider off-site archiving options with limited access, says Yuhanna. Should You Dump it Instead? Legal experts note that keeping certain old data could add to your company’s risk in the event of an e-discovery case. If you decide to dump the data, wiping software, which overwrites your hard drive with unreadable gobbledygook, is one option: consider such products as WipeMaSSter or Active@KillDisk. Other options include degaussing (frying with an electrical impulse to render it unreadable) or destroying a hard drive outright. To be sure, protecting your company’s database is a challenging, time-consuming task. And, as Agilent’s Flores warns, the proverbial chain is only as strong as its weakest link. But nonetheless, making your best effort could help inoculate your company from all kinds of unforeseen dangers.
As a small to mid-sized business grows, so does the sheer volume of information generated each day: account information and budgets, along with databases of inventory and employee records. The list is endless. A generation ago, it was euphemistically called the paper blizzard. Now, it’s more like a digital Tsunami that only gets bigger and more difficult to manage for the organization without a storage strategy. “Archiving data is less about where to put it and more about how to get it when you need it,” says Andrew Reichman, an analyst from Forrester Research. Indeed, many small to mid-sized businesses make the mistake of growing out their methods for storing data like the business itself: piecemeal and as needed. The end result can be disjointed, irretrievable data that is mission critical to the company, yet scattered across a variety of discs, servers, and individual employee hard drives. The good news: data storage has never been more plentiful or cheaper. The trick is wading through the myriad of options available and deciding which one works best for your organization. In-house versus out The first big decision to be made is whether to keep all or most of the company data in-house or out-of-house. Traditionally, companies of all sizes have kept their information on site. However, using a third party host to store data online is increasingly popular. Out of house options What do Intel, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Seagate Technologies, and EMC all have in common? They are all heavily investing in online backup storage solutions; whether it’s buying startups like IBM snapping up Arsenal Digital, EMC acquiring Mozy, or Seagate absorbing eVault. And then there’s Google launching its own initiative called GDrive service. There are also countless independent companies (that haven’t been bought up yet) offering data backup and storage online and on the cheap. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages for the growing company: Advantages: It’s cheap, fast to deploy, and turnkey requiring no staffing to maintain the data. Plus, vendors have the advantage of using economies of scale to provide better security and store data more cheaply than a smaller organization doing it all on its own. However, the most important advantage is really more basic than that. “The biggest reason to go out of house is to get remote backup capability,” says John Longwell, research director for Irvine, Calif.-based Computer Economics. Simply put, you don’t want to have all your eggs (or data) in one basket (or place). If the building burns down or even just a poorly-timed snow day keeps employees away from the office during a critical time for the business, the results can be devastating. Off-site backup and remote access to information is a core need for most businesses today. Disadvantages: “The server and the application need to be in the same place. Going outside works if you’re talking about using Gmail as the company e-mail client and then archiving it all on Google, or CRM data with Salesforce.com. Businesses need to be careful which parts of the business processes they can give to someone else,” says Reichman. Even Amazon is now offering cheap data storage and retrieval programs like “SimpleDB”, which is in beta as of this writing. However, simple is the optimal word in that brand. It is a very simplistic way of searching and fetching data. It is not the place to store financial information a company may need to aggregate in a variety of sophisticated ways to generate specific reports. In-house options Despite all the hype over third party vendors offering online storage, in-house options make a lot of sense, as well, and may be more practical for many businesses. Advantages: The obvious advantage is retaining control at all times. The other advantage is that the major disadvantages are disappearing fast. In-house solutions are getting cheaper and more effective too. “There’s a big shift among small to mid-sized businesses from on-board discs (data separately stored on each individual computer and server) to what’s called centralized network storage. This can be as simple as throwing a single appliance on the network that houses all the data. By centralizing storage, information can be pulled from multiple sources and aggregated into richer data. It also makes it easier to manage all the company information, control user access and retrieve it when needed. Disadvantages: In-house solutions mean buying gear, getting it installed, and then taking on the expense of maintaining it. “Sometimes it’s a tough pill for small to mid-sized businesses to swallow,” admits Reichman, who encourages executives to look at the long term savings of better data management specific to the business. It’s something an outside vendor can’t provide, as well. Deciding factors Costs: Web-based third party vendors are cheaper, at least up front. It depends on the size of the business, however, whether they make sense. If a company has someone on staff to maintain a centralized storage network, then it might make more sense to invest in the equipment and save on vendor fees typically based on the amount of data stored on a subscription basis. What data and why and when it is needed: How will users interface and retrieve information as they need it? A third party vendor may not be able to offer the sophistication needed to work with certain applications or databases. Then again, it may make sense to house older and less important data off-site and out of the way. Prioritizing storage needs: What’s the primary motive for storing data? Is it backup and security? If so a third party vendor is likely the answer, since it offers off site protection of the data and often smaller businesses don’t have the same level of security as the vendor (like encryption and less network downtime). Sidebar: Data Storage Options Carbonite is designed to backup data on each individual computer or server. It runs constantly in the background backing up data and is handy for the desktop user who loses a file or accidentally deletes something of importance. Lost information can be retrieved immediately. This is not a likely solution however, for growing companies that need to manage data in a centralized way controlling access and aggregating data driven reports. Mozy Similar to Carbonite, it is designed for the individual user who needs his or her information constantly being backed up remotely in case of a virus strike or ill-timed computer crash. Mozy, however, does offer a professional version with a number of features like administrative powers to manage data from multiple sources and encryption. Its new parent company, EMC, may have something to do with the increasingly beefed up services targeting corporate clients. Pricing is based on a combination of price by seat ($3.95 per computer, per month) and 50 cents a GB per month xDrive is primarily targeting the consumer market. But for the small business just starting out, it’s worth consideration. xDrive charges $9.95 for 50 gigabytes of storage. Based in Beverly Hills, Calif., xDrive is actually owned by AOL and markets itself as a preferred solution for backing up pictures, graphics and video for easy web access and collaboration with others. As is, it’s easy to imagine a business quickly outgrowing xDrive. But with AOL as its parent company, it’s also easy to imagine xDrive scaling up it services for growing organizations before that happens. Nirvanix is attracting a lot of attention, as well as high profile investors like Intel. The San Diego, Calif.-based data storage company is especially attractive to the small to midsize business market because it offers scalable storage services for a flat fee of 18 cents a gigabyte. What makes Nirvanix special is its application programming interface (API) that enables companies to easily integrate Nirvanix Web Services into their own company applications. In comparing just these four examples of online data storage vendors, there is at least one common denominator: they are all still growing out their corporate features to accommodate businesses. “The options are still limited today, but it’s getting there,” says Reichman.
There’s no worse feeling for a PC user than realizing something important was just deleted — whether accidentally, from a hard-drive crash, virus, or power surge. Not only can it be a frustrating inconvenience, but the problem is magnified considerably when the data kept on the computer is essential for running a business. This can impact the business, its partners, and its customers. The only protection against losing critical information on your business PCs is to back up important files on a regular basis. Some mid-size businesses are already backing up computer servers regularly. But some of the most critical business information oftentimes resides on individual PCs. Businesses that have many remote workers or businesses that don’t have servers may want to also consider PC backup. Backup at the PC level can be handled in a number of ways, such as using an external hard-drive or server, using a tape-based backup system, or taking a leap of faith and hoping that employees are backing up important files using portable USB memory sticks or CDs or DVDs. For some businesses, however, those options are no longer good enough. Uploading files to an online backup company has become one of the increasingly popular solutions for small and mid-size businesses as costs have come down, the number of vendors increases as traditional offline storage firms such as EMC get into the act, and the risks of not backing up — or trusting employees to do it — are too great to the business. Benefits of online backup One of the biggest reasons to backup online is for disaster prevention. “Local backup solutions are prone to natural disasters such as floods, fires and hurricanes,” explains Vance Checketts, director of business operations at Berkeley Data Systems, a Salt Lake City-based online storage company best known for its Mozy services, which was recently acquired by EMC. “But more importantly, online backup solutions reduce the risk of human error because a professional, third-party organization is hard at work protecting your backed-up data.” For businesses, MozyPro pricing costs $3.95 per PC per month plus $0.50 cents per gigabyte per month. “The key advantage is your data is kept offsite — so your data is protected even if you’re having a problem at your office,” says Richard Shim, research manager for personal computing at IDC, the Framingham, Mass. technology research firm. After all, it was only in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina decimated much of the north-central Gulf Coast, causing more than 1,800 deaths and more than $80 billion dollars in damage. “Offsite storage translates to easy access — anytime and anywhere — so you’ll always have access to it,” adds Shim. Often considered an “insurance policy” for your critical work information, online backup solutions can also be automated so important files or folders are automatically backed up — after the workday ends, say, at 2 a.m. every night — therefore the employee doesn’t have to remember to do so manually. Price and other challenges “The primary challenge with online backup is finding a solution that does backup well at a cost-effective price,” says Checketts. “Too many solutions are focused on online storage, which is quite different from backup, as [the former] is simply a cyber-locker without task-appropriate automation or encryption.” He says that businesses need a backup system that is automatic, secure, and cost effective. The cost for backup and storage is one of the key obstacles to more wide-spread adoption of the technology, says Shim. Many small and mid-size businesses are constantly watching the bottom line and decide to forego the expense for an ongoing backup system. In addition, traditional methods of backup, such as USB drives or CDs are so inexpensive. A 500GB external hard drive can be found for less than $100 these days, which is a one-time fee, compared to an ongoing monthly payment. “Cost can be an issue for a small business since you have to pay for monthly maintenance fees, to secure and manage this data,” explains Shim. Small businesses also have to grapple with the question of whether they want company information, e-mails, and spreadsheets to be in third-party hands — even if those third parties are trusted sources. “Depending on how sensitive that data is, there could be a security issue,” says Shim. “You give up a certain amount of security by making it more accessible online, trusting it in the hands of another company.” Mozy’s backup solutions, however, claim 128-bit SSL encryption to safely secure customer data during transport and 448-bit Blowfish encryption to secure the data on Berkeley Data Systems’ servers. Deciding factors Small and mid-size businesses need to consider a number of factors before taking the plunge into online backup: Do they have the resources for another monthly service fee? Are enough security controls in place at the online backup vendor to ensure that sensitive business data will not fall into the wrong hands? Will employees remember to backup important files each night on USB drives or CDs? What would happen to the business if a disaster struck — a fire, earthquake, hurricane, flood or other event — that destroyed business computers and all the business data stored on their hard-drives? Conclusion While not for every business, online backup solutions need to be considered by data-dependent businesses that could be wiped out in the event of a manmade or natural disaster. Not all small and mid-size businesses have the resources to spring for a disaster recovery backup site. The ease with which critical information and files can be downloaded onto a new computer is also a factor to help in the event of a computer crash or a hard-drive meltdown. The costs of trying to recover files in man hours alone probably would exceed a year of monthly fees for online backup. In addition, a recent Forrester Research survey found that when businesses left it to employees to backup important files, companies often had no way of verifying that backup copies were made. Automating the process of backing up data takes one additional risk out of running a business that is heavily dependent on electronic data. SIDEBAR: Online PC Backup Vendors Here are several vendors that provide online backup services targeted at the small and mid-size business sector: EVault – A wholly-owned subsidiary of Seagate Technology, the disc-drive manufacturer, offersEvault Desktop, an online backup service for protecting laptops and PCs. The company deploys such security protections as data encryption and state-of-the-art data centers. A Web-based management console can let your business monitor workflow and allow for flexibility to schedule times backups or additional runs. Iron Mountain – The records management and data storage company now also offers digital products, including an online PC backup product for small and mid-size businesses. The product allows a business to protect between five and 100 PCs with convenient, consolidated billing. Iron Mountain is a recognized name in data storage and boasts that businesses can “rest assured that their data is protected.” Berkley Data Systems (EMC) – This company’s MozyPro online PC backup has received several publishers’ awards. Now that this company is part of EMC, customers may be more satisfied with a big-name behind the start-up. The product offers automatic or scheduled backup, bandwidth-saving features so it won’t interfere with other business processes, and an interface designed with the “non-tech-savvy” user in mind so that it’s easy to use.
Small business is big business for data storage appliance makers these days. In the past few years, companies that previously catered only to the large corporate market, such as NetApp, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and EMC have rolled out products geared toward small businesses — an audience estimated at about two million. There are two reasons why such businesses are all of the sudden a potential audience for storage appliances: Price erosion and increased data needs. First, as with other segments of the tech business, prices for memory have dropped exponentially in recent years. Nowadays, an entry-level data storage appliance costs around $3,000. That’s a far cry from a few years ago. “Five to seven years ago you’d be looking at paying $30,000 even before you get going,” says Sajai Krishnan, general manager for StoreVault, NetApp’s small business-focused product line. Storage needs are only growing At the same time, such companies have an ever-expanding need for data storage. “There’s a general trend towards digitizing everything,” said Krishnan. “It’s almost like there’s an iPod and a pre-iPod generation. There’s way more data now than before.” Phil Treide, marketing manager for small and mid-size business storage for EMC, of Boston, says that small businesses are under pressure to keep more data on hand, partially because of new legal demands to keep copies of e-mails on file. “We think the business conditions today are such that small and mid-size businesses are dealing with the same issues of large businesses, including the impact of regulation,” Treide says. “People are afraid to throw anything away.” Luckily, you can get a lot for your money these days. The entry-level appliances have about 750 gigabytes of storage and there’s usually not much need for additional services. Even the installation is fairly straightforward, especially if your staff is relatively small. Krishnan compares setting up one of his StoreVault machines to hooking up a TiVo digital video recorder, though the task becomes more complex if there are a large number of employees (like 100) in the network. Easy to install, automatic backup Desmond Fuller IT director for iBiquity, a Columbia, Md., developer of HD Radio technology, says it took him about 20 minutes to hook up each of his company’s eight StoreVault machines. As each machine holds about six terabytes of data, Fuller has 48 terabytes of StoreVault data at his disposal. Fuller says that until a few years ago, there were very few data storage appliance companies catering to the small business market. “The high-end stuff is too expensive and has too many bells and whistles for me,” Fuller says. One popular feature of most data storage appliances is the ability to automatically backup data. Some even suggest buying two machines if you can so one can clone the other’s data if, for some reason, one of the machines were to lose some memory. Though hard drives are the medium of choice for such tasks and most machines are basically automated hard drives, tape is still a surprisingly popular option. Tape? “There’s a ton of it out there,” says Charles King, principal analyst of Pund-IT Research, Hayward, Calif. “It’s like that Monty Python movie with the old man: ‘I’m not dead yet.’”
Small businesses running one application per Windows server probably aren’t maximizing the use of that server, but they haven’t had many other options up until recently. Windows historically hasn’t done a good job of supporting multiple applications per server. But the advent of “virtualization” software is making it easier for smaller companies to better utilize their x86 systems. With virtualization, one physical server can host multiple virtual machines — think of them as individual servers residing in one box. Multiple applications, even those running under different operating systems, can share the same physical box. This allows small and mid-size companies to not only consolidate systems and save costs, but it means they can undertake other projects, such as creating a mirror of their business’ critical applications for disaster recovery and business continuity, without having to deploy an equivalent number of new servers. The server virtualization vendors have figured out that some smaller businesses are as eager for their products as large enterprises. Earlier this year, leading virtualization vendor VMware unveiled a bundled offering aimed at smaller customers. It consists of its free, hosted VMware Server — small and mid-size businesses already account for 70 percent of downloads of this software — plus its VirtualCenter management platform and enterprise-class support for $1,500. Benefits of virtualization Server virtualization technology for the x86-server environment enables businesses to run multiple applications, even though they may use different operating systems such as Windows or Linux. Virtualization creates isolated “virtual” machines within a single physical server. This translates into benefits for server consolidation and utilization, and business responsiveness and continuity, among other features. VMware, an EMC company, is the leader in the space, with its bare-metal hypervisor VMwareESX Server, a product that starts at around $3,500. But Microsoft is a competitor, with Microsoft Virtual Server, as well as companies such as XenSource and Virtual Iron, which sell commercial value-added solutions based on the open-source Xen hypervisor. Smaller businesses actually stand to get more out of their investments in virtualization technology than large enterprises. Larger businesses, because of the processor and distribution complexity of their networks, typically are virtualizing less of their server infrastructure than smaller companies. In small and mid-size businesses, x86-based Windows or Linux servers likely make up a bigger proportion of foundational infrastructure, says John Sloan, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group. “If they’re consolidating 40 or 50 servers on fewer physical boxes and getting better utilization, they are applying virtualization to the lions’ share of their infrastructure,” Sloan says. The tipping point for virtualization adoption starts at about 100 employees, according to Info-Tech Research, and “when you get up to 500 employees you see a fairly strong contingent that, if not actually deploying virtualization in production environments, are at least moving towards doing that,” Sloan says. Smaller businesses often embrace virtualization technologies in order to be more responsive to their business counterparts. With virtualization, provisioning new applications is as easy as creating a new virtual machine. “They want to avoid costs as much or more than big companies, and they want to be very responsive to getting new servers up and running,” says Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO of CiRBA, Inc. CiRBA’s software helps companies analyze data center assets, fix upon a strategy for virtualization or application stacking to improve efficiency and utilization, and map out how to move to and monitor these new environments. Challenges for small businesses In smaller businesses looking to implement a virtualization strategy, it’s particularly critical to analyze configurations for technical factors — such as servers that use the same storage — to see what could go together. In addition, businesses need to examine workload constraints — such as CPU, memory, and disk I/O requirements — to see what servers and processes actually fits together, rather than randomly coupling virtual machine systems. “If you’re not doing due diligence, just slapping things together and saying ‘I’ll change it if it doesn’t work,’ that’s not great,” Hillier says. Imagine the potential disaster of combining together four servers with non-overlapping maintenance windows into four virtual machines. “If the maintenance windows don’t overlap, you can never do hardware maintenance again,” he says. Smaller businesses tend to rely primarily on local storage, but both Sloan and Hillier advocate consolidating onto a storage area network (SAN) in conjunction with a virtualized server environment, to reap the greatest benefits and ensure availability. “With a SAN you can do things like move a virtual machine from one physical box to another, as the files are all on the SAN,” says Sloan. Products from virtualization vendors such as VMware now support iSCSI, which is a more cost-efficient way than Fibre Channel for small businesses to build a SAN.
The ubiquity of broadband has made it possible to trade the home office for a troupe of laptop-wielding employees spread all over the globe, but creating such a network can be tricky because there are so many options. Security is always a concern, as is cost, as is reliability. As Chris Moody, president of Boston-based collaboration software maker Aquent on Demand notes, the claim “98 percent uptime” sounds good until you run the numbers. “You’re talking about a few days a year,” he says, which can be damaging to a growing business. Plus there’s the eternal debate of whether to buy software or subscribe to a hosted service. Tools needed to network Nevertheless, there has never been a better time to connect remote offices. The array of collaboration software tools seems limitless. But before setting up a network that links bureaus to a main office, Erica Driver, principal analyst with Forrester Research, of Cambridge, Mass., suggests taking the following steps: Use hosted services if you don’t have the IT resources to run the software in-house. Employ a team collaboration tool for multi-person projects and team activities. Features for such a tool include a document repository, team workspaces, discussion threads, basic library services (like check in/check out), ad hoc workflow, application templates like project management, news alerts and surveys. Driver recommends vendors like Aquent, BaseCamp, EMC, IBM (which offers QuickPlace), Microsoft (Groove, SharePoint) and WebEx, among others, for these services. Tap Web 2.0 technologies for social computing to help people find and communicate with each other and find and interact with the information they need. Such applications include blogs, wikis, tagging, syndication, shared bookmarks, social networking and mashups. Vendors for this type of software include Blogtronix, eTouch Systems, FlexWiki, MediaWiki and Traction Software, among others. Use real-time collaboration software so that interactions can be, in fact, real-time. Real-time collaboration features include presence, instant messaging, Web conferencing, white boarding, voice conversations, and videoconferencing. Such applications include Adobe’s Acrobat Connect, Skype and AOL’s Instant Messenger, among others. Connecting remote staff members Of all the applications, instant messaging (IM) may be one of the most valuable, Moody says. “Instant messaging is a huge one,” he says. “We rely on IMs spread across six different cities.” Best of all, IM software can be free. But the best collaborative software solution strongly correlates with the type of business you run. Steve Marinetto, senior director of creative services for k12, a Herndon, Va., firm that specializes in curriculum development for elementary schools, says Aquent’s RoboHead has worked well for him since he signed up for the hosted service about six months ago as a tool for his 20-person office. Marinetto pays a monthly fee for the software. Aquent’s prices for such applications are on a per-user basis and charged per month. RoboHead lets employees in remote offices log in at the beginning of the day and get a list of their assignments. “I have some people that work flex time in shop and at home and it works great,” he says. “It’s a project management tool that’s terrific at scheduling resources and projects.”
