Another Year of Revolution

As 2009 comes to a close, it’s natural to look back at what the last year has brought us. Needless to say, it has been a difficult one for many of us, battling an economy that just won’t cooperate and just trying to stay afloat. However, through the good times and the bad, the wheel keeps on turning; innovation continues, and perhaps particularly in the bad times, people demonstrate their true resiliency and agility.

It’s been a year of “do more with less.” And often, that leads us to find ways to do better – to create efficiency and productivity, to save money and save time, and to make our jobs that much easier (which makes room for new challenges.)

As we look at our own little corner of the  IT industry, we see that backup and recovery technology has witnessed giant leaps forward.  Continuous data protection, data compression and deduplication, replication to the cloud – we’ve seen all of these technologies break through into the mainstream consciousness of our industry, driven by the mantra of “do more with less.” But the benefits are real, and the innovation continues.

And as always seems the case at the end of the year, the real excitement lies ahead. Solid state drives, cloud-based computing and storage, netbooks and (super)smartphones are all poised for major growth in 2010. What are you most looking forward to? Drop us a line at leadgeek@appassure.com, or – as always – find us on Twitter at @appassure.

Industry News

Top 10 data backup and recovery storage tips for SMBs in 2009

In the past, data backup and recovery for small- to midsized businesses (SMBs) was limited to just a few data backup tools and technologies. Many vendors didn’t make midrange products for SMBs, and with limited budgets, SMBs often couldn’t afford higher-end technologies. However, all of that is changing now.

What is the killer app for cloud computing?

It takes a lot of time and money to protect the growing amount of data, and with the government increasing regulatory oversight and mandating that data be kept around for years for review, costs and complexity are increasing rapidly. The desire to have someone else worry about it for you and take that monkey off your back is not only good business, its human nature.

Improved storage handling with Microsoft Hyper-V R2

When Microsoft released Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008, it shook the virtualization world with a cheap – and viable — hypervisor option. Still, VMware remained the hypervisor leader in several technical areas, including storage. With Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft made some changes to Hyper-V (now Hyper-V R2) to make it a more worthy competitor. While new features like live migration are getting a lot of hype, storage enhancements are also noteworthy.

The Cloud as Just Another Storage Tier

The major cloud platform providers have largely sold enterprises on the potential benefits of the technology. But now, the pressure is on the make it all work. To do that, they’ll need more than just a trade show demonstration on the advantages of dynamic resource allocation and limitless scalability. They’ll need a means to integrate the cloud into legacy data center infrastructure.

Five ways to ensure the success of data migration projects

Regardless of what type of enterprise data storage media you house your data in, data migration can be a complicated process. According to Bloor Research, an independent IT research and analyst firm in Europe, more than half of all data migration projects experience cost overruns or schedule delays. This occurs despite companies spending approximately $5 billion a year on data migration.

News from AppAssure

Win a 128GB Solid State Drive in December

Not to worry – we’ve got a new contest for December! We still have 7 available downloads (AppAssure Backup & Replication, DocRetriever, MailRetriever, DocRetriever Lite, MailRetriever Lite, Exchange Observer, and the Hyper-V Toolset), and every qualified download in December will enter you into our drawing for a free 128GB Solid State Drive from Crucial.

Chapter 5 – Rethinking SQL Server Backups – Now Available for Download!

The latest chapter of our free e-book – The Definitive Guide to Windows Application and Server Backup 2.0 – by Don Jones is now available! This chapter dives deep into what it takes to protect our most important data, in what is often our most complex data store.

Finally this week, a little plug for an old pet project of mine. As many of you know, in a past life I was editor-in-chief of TechNet Magazine. Though I’ve moved on to new challenges, I still have a soft spot for the publication I worked on for so many years, so it’s particularly nice to see the return of the TechNet Magazine Tips. I always though the daily tip, a project spearheaded by then Senior Editor Matt Graven, was a terrific way to provide bite-sized practical information to our fellow IT pros.  The project went quiet for a while, but has recently returned in all its glory, with a month of Windows 7 tips. Be sure to check them out!

Have a great week,

Josh