Real World ROI

Not long ago, I told you about the release of our new Backup 2.0 ROI Toolkit, with tools and information designed to help you make a business case for Backup 2.0 in your organization. Well, we’re taking that discussion to the next step with a complimentary webinar entitled Understanding the ROI of Backup 2.0: Building a business case. I’ll be your host for this discussion on how companies are leveraging more efficient technology solutions to have a direct impact on their bottom line, and how to calculate that impact in your organization. We’ll also walk through a demo of how AppAssure Backup & Replication can help you achieve these goals.

I’ll also be joined by Brooks Betts, VP of Information Services at Lincoln County Healthcare. Brooks will share best practices based on his own firsthand experience in building a business case for Backup 2.0, and the value his IT department delivered as a result.

Register today, and be sure to join us on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 2pm EST, for what’s sure to be an exciting discussion.

Industry News

Shrink Your Backup Window
Nobody likes to tie up resources with a long-running backup. So how do you shrink your backup window? There are many approaches, but in SAN environments, sometimes the best solution is to back up directly from the shared storage rather than from the servers themselves. These so called “off-host” backups have its own challenges, however, so you need to weigh your options carefully.

From Whence Redundancy? Exchange 2010 Storage Essays, part 1
Join IT blogger Devin Ganger as he explores updates to best practices for managing Exchange storage that have come about with the release of Exchange 2010.

How Microsoft IT Uses System Center Virtual Machine Manager to Manage the Private Cloud
This video from TechNet Edge demonstrates how Microsoft IT uses System Center Virtual Machine Manager as a key component of its management strategy in supporting the virtualized data center.

Data storage priorities 2010: data backup, capacity growth and disaster recovery
The top three data storage priorities for 2010 are data backup (48%), adding capacity (37%) and disaster recovery (DR) (36%). This is according to enterprise data storage managers responding to SearchStorage.com’s Storage Priorities for 2010 survey. In fact, in the three years SearchStorage has fielded the survey, those have been among the top three priorities for each coming year. However, data deduplication for primary storage, solid-state storage and cloud storage are quickly gaining ground.

The Role of IT in the Era of the Cloud
Even the most optimistic people in IT can’t help but wonder what will become of them and their jobs in this new era of cloud computing. The only thing that is certain is that their jobs will change along with their roles within the organization. Instead of building solutions and maintaining systems, it’s more likely that IT people will become the integrators of cloud computing services of all different types and sizes.

News from AppAssure

Schedule Your Free, Live Demonstration of AppAssure Backup & Replication
See AppAssure Backup & Replication in action! Join one of our backup and recovery experts for a live, no-cost web demonstration of how AppAssure Backup & Replication can recover individual files or entire servers in just seconds!

Backup 2.0 Hero: Eric Sagerdahl – Walden House
In the 39 years since it first opened its doors as a local drug and alcohol treatment center, Walden House has evolved into a national leader in developing strategies to help addicts recover and maintain their lives. Today’s Walden House helps to treat more than 3,400 men, women and children each day and Walden House’s IT Analyst, Eric Sagerdahl uses AppAssure to make sure nothing goes wrong with any of the systems.

Finally this week, a quick look into the future, as Network Computing blogger Howard Marks discusses holographic storage. It’s actually not as far into the future as you might think!

Have a great week,

Josh