Remote Backup — Lifeline And Opportunity By Rob Cosgrove, Remote Backup Systems, Inc.

If what the late president Ronald Reagan said is true, and information is the oxygen of the modern age, then the data housed in remote or branch offices may be choking to death. The data in satellite offices is not safe. Every day, new virus attacks launch on unsuspecting business users. With the wide availability of broadband internet connections, the danger intensifies.

That remote data is not trivial. Up to 60% of server-based information that is remotely stored is either business-critical or mission critical. This information is vulnerable to hard drive failures, fire flood, power spikes or outages, I/O failures and more. Leaving that data unprotected is a business risk…even more, it is a financial waste.

But all of this is hardly news to anyone who has remote offices with data to protect. It is a story that has been told and re-told for some years now. So why is it that one of IDC's published storage predictions for 2007 reads: ‘A vendor battle will erupt as companies extend storage architectures to include branch and remote offices.'?