Contributed Article By Bob Roudebush, VP of Marketing, Neverfail
Disaster Recovery Will Lead IaaS Adoption Drivers
If you're a U.S. history buff reading this post, you've have probably heard of the Colt's Manufacturing Company. Formerly Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company, CMC is a United States firearms manufacturer originally founded in 1836. Colt revolvers, some of the first truly modern designs of handguns, became known as "The Great Equalizer". Unlike previous guns which required great strength and dexterity, Colt revolvers could be loaded and fired by just about anyone.
The question, though, is how this has anything to do with either disaster recovery or cloud computing.
Forrester's Enterprise and SMB Hardware Survey from Q3 showed that 61% of North American enterprises and 64% of European enterprises say that upgrading DR capabilities is either a critical or high priority for the next 12 months. The reality of today's environment, though, is that many organizations only protect a handful of mission-critical applications, if any at all. The cost and complexity of the supporting infrastructure required at the recovery data center is simply too much for them to bear.
And that's why cloud computing, specifically Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings, are going to become "The Great Equalizer" of today's disaster recovery version of the Wild Wild West. Some industry experts put the cost of standard Tier 3 data center space at $2,366.67 per sq. ft. to build and an additional $111.17 per sq. ft. in electricity costs per year. In a DR scenario this doesn't even begin to account for the really expensive stuff - servers, storage, connectivity and expertise.
By definition cloud computing implies that the workload in question is running somewhere else - and this is one of the major tenets of any serious recovery plan. Secondly, it shifts the cost of the secondary facility (sometimes the most expensive aspect of disaster recovery) to someone else's budget.
For all of the benefits of cloud computing for production use or as an alternative to on-premise deployments, concerns remain that are impeding more widespread enterprise adoption. For most, it's a simple matter of control. Some IT organizations worry that they will lose visibility into their applications and data by moving them to the cloud. Fears stem from security concerns, particularly for public companies concerned with regulatory compliance. As a means of providing disaster recovery, though, cloud computing is used specifically for the recovery of workloads during a declared disaster and not for day-to-day production use, alleviating some of the control around cloud computing that organizations have had to-date.
The marriage of disaster recovery to the cloud sounds like a powerful alliance, right? So why is 2011 the year when it becomes a primary driver for moving to the cloud? Cloud-based disaster recovery services first started appearing at the end of 2009, which means that most are not even a year old. What's more, many of these should be really described as replication-as-a-service because they do not yet provide full DR capabilities.
In 2011, organizations will begin to deploy advanced availability solutions in IaaS-based clouds which can extend protection beyond just the data to the underlying operating systems and, most importantly, to applications. Furthermore, in-line data deduplication capabilities now shipping as part of DR solutions will make the cloud viable for sign middle majority of the market. Small businesses are okay - they don't have a lot of data. Big business are okay - they can afford lots of bandwidth. In the middle is where it gets challenging because there is enough data to make cloud-based DR a challenge and not enough money to address the challenge.
About the Author
Bob Roudebush joined Neverfail as Vice President of Marketing in August of 2010. Bob has more than 15 years of experience in the software industry holding a variety of sales, product management and marketing roles. In his position, he is responsible for leading the worldwide marketing efforts for Neverfail including field and corporate marketing programs, online marketing, press relations and product marketing.
Previously, Bob was Director of Sales Engineering for Infrastructure as a Service cloud computing startup BlueLock, LLC. Prior to joining BlueLock, he worked for Double-Take Software as a chief evangelist for the company and Director of Product Marketing. Through Bob's efforts, Double-Take Software became widely acknowledged as a market leader in accessible data protection for the Windows platform and was eventually acquired in 2010. Additionally, Bob also served in various sales and technical sales roles for Microsoft Corporation until 2005, most recently leading the channel and technical sales and marketing efforts for Microsoft's SMS&P organization in the Midwest District.
Bob is an accomplished public speaker and brings a uniquely technical approach to his role. He has presented at numerous industry events and conferences including VMworld North America, VMworld Europe and Microsoft TechEd. He attended Rose-Hulman Technical Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana.