The pace of change in the data centre is accelerating as South African organisations adopt technologies such as the cloud, virtualisation and mobility to become more agile and efficient. Yet business continuity and disaster recovery strategies in many organisations remain mired in legacy, because risk committees at many companies and their auditors prefer to stick to the proven technology.
"There's potential to do better business continuity," says James Beaumont, CEO of iSquared. "Today, we have faster and low-cost bandwidth, fibre in the last mile, virtualisation, and cloud-based services, all of which could enable companies to meet stringent continuity requirements with less complexity and at lower cost than before."
Yet many companies are still stuck using old technology, often because that's the easiest way to satisfy governance committees and auditors. For example, many external auditors insist that companies have tape backups in place, when cheaper and better alternatives such as disc-based or cloud solutions are available, says Beaumont.
The danger with this approach is that many companies are lulled into a false sense of security, imagining that tape backups will allow them to recover quickly and keep working through a disaster. "And when disaster strikes, they're woefully unprepared, often with crippling consequences," Beaumont says.
"People feel that legislation creates a need for tape," says Petrus Human, technical director at Attix5. "And there's still a need for it as an archiving medium." But other solutions such as disc provide organisations with far more flexibility and faster access to data, meaning the role of tape is shrinking.
Cockroaches and tape might be the only things to survive a nuclear war, says Veeam Software territory manager Warren Olivier. Yet physical server backups - especially by tape - are slow, labour-intensive and unreliable, he adds. Only around 7% of backups are tested for reliability, and one in six attempts will fail.
New risk landscape
One problem with tape is that the Linear Tape-Open standard has gone through no less than six iterations since 2000, from LTO-1 to today's LTO-6, says Ian Faller, operations manager at CipherWave. Backwards compatibility between earlier versions of LTO and newer versions is limited, so you can't be sure of recovery.
Against this backdrop, companies need to start thinking about backup, archiving, disaster recovery and business continuity as separate items, says Beaumont. Continuity - as most providers define it - isn't just about the technology, but also about the processes and people needed to keep the business going when disaster strikes.
In today's fast-paced business environment, a quick speed of recovery is essential to prevent financial loss, says Faller. Cloud computing can help businesses to meet this demand, allowing companies to be resilient in the event of an outage or disaster. Given the vulnerability of data cables linking South Africa to overseas networks, organisations are wise to host critical data and applications with local cloud providers, he adds.
Audit firms are forcing companies to use unsuitable, antiquated technology for their disaster recovery needs.
James Beaumont, CEO, iSquared
Despite its many potential advantages, businesses need to be wary of the new risks and threats the cloud brings to business continuity. "There's a new risk landscape to manage," says Peter Westcott, business continuity management advisor at ContinuitySA. "What happens if your cloud provider goes bankrupt?"
Companies should, for example, be aware of the dangers of hosting their disaster recovery platforms in the same cloud as their production systems, says Westcott. There's another concern around ownership of and responsibility for data hosted by a cloud provider - who will take accountability in the event of a disaster?
Olivier says virtualisation - already widely used in production environments - brings a range of benefits for continuity and disaster recovery planning. It makes it more affordable for companies to use techniques such as replication, since they no longer need to run exact duplicates of their production hardware in their failover sites.
Because a virtual machine is just a file, it can be easily shared between different types of server hardware at the operations and disaster recovery sites. It's speedier and more reliable to replicate data across sites or the cloud in a virtualised environment than it is to rely on tape backup, says Olivier. Although it's possible to virtualise tape environments, disc is more suitable because of its speed and flexibility.
Small company, big cost
Cloud computing, virtualisation and easier-to-use, more affordable tools for automating backups are particularly welcome developments for small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford to replicate their production environments at an off-site location.
There's a new risk landscape - what happens if your cloud provider goes bankrupt?
Peter Westcott, business continuity management advisor, ContinuitySA
Chris Ogden, MD of RubiBlue, a company in Johannesburg that offers software to funeral providers, says small companies often neglect the basics of backing up and putting plans in place to ensure continuity. But hosted or cloud solutions are making it easier for smaller companies to manage risks such as a fire or theft of their hardware.
From its side, RubiBlue has invested more than R2.5 million in its data centre over the past few months. It has hired cabinet space from multiple service providers to ensure its clients keep running in the event of a disaster, something few small businesses have time to worry about.
The costs of doubling up infrastructure are prohibitive for all but the largest companies, says Human. However, small companies have other options such as running multiple backups of critical systems such as Exchange servers and SQL databases, so that they have a better recovery point if there is some sort of failure or outage.
Even though business continuity can seem expensive, South African companies are beginning to see it in a new light, says Greg Comline, GM of Global Continuity SA. In the past, companies saw it as short-term insurance against improbably but potentially devastating risks. Now, the more forward-thinking companies are seeing it as a form of medical aid - an investment in the health of their businesses.
"We're seeing a shift towards the business owning the continuity strategy," he says. "Proactive companies are using their continuity investments to be more agile."
For example, many organisations are now using their backup sites for project work or to keep IT alive during systems migrations or office moves.
As complexities of managing IT environments continue to spiral and pressures to reduce costs climb, it seems a sure bet that enterprises will keep looking for new ways to get more value from their disaster recovery and business continuity investments.
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