Contributing Editorial: 10 Criteria to Selecting the Right Enterprise Business Continuity Software — Part II

By Jerome M. Wendt, DCIG LLC

In the first part of this two-part blog series on the 10 criteria to selecting the right enterprise business continuity software, I took a look at the first four criteria. This second part covers the last six criteria and specifically examines where InMage Systems DR-Scout is at in delivering on these requirements.

Application integration
Replicating data without any knowledge of what application is using the data or how it is using the data presents a substantial problem when it comes time to recover the application. Recovering applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint or SQL Server that keep multiple files open at the same time can result in inconsistent and unrecoverable copies of data at the DR site. Business continuity software must integrate with these applications such that it provides consistently recoverable images. DR-Scout currently integrates with the aforementioned applications to provide consistent, recoverable images doe these applications. Development work is currently occurring at InMage to expand the number of applications with which DR-Scout integrates.

Provides multiple recovery points
A problem with a number of existing business continuity solutions is that it only provides one recovery point - the one right before the disaster occurred. However disasters are rarely ever that neat and tidy and sometimes companies are not even aware a disaster has occurred until hours after the disaster (think database corruption or wrong file loaded). Business continuity software needs to provide multiple recovery points so companies can rollback to a point in time right before the disaster occurred as well as give them multiple options to recover the data. Because DR-Scout is based on continuous data protection (CDP) technology, when companies implement DR-Scout, they immediately receive this benefit.