The Value of Data $$$
By Tricia Camera, amerivault corp.

There's no argument - delayed, inaccessible, or lost data equates to a loss of revenue for business, never mind intangible costs. A foundation on which business is built is data. However, businesses continue to employ procedures that fall short of securing and retrieving mission-critical data. Why? Many companies employ older methodologies of disaster recovery (DR) that don't apply to current and future demands of data methodology. However, this must change, because CEOs, CIOs, and CFOs cannot justify this financial loss to investors, venture capitalists, employees, and customers.

Reasons for Data Loss
According to the International Data Corporation, hardware failure is responsible for 42 percent of the data loss experienced by businesses. Human error accounts for 30 percent, software failure 13 percent, viruses 7 percent, theft of equipment 5 percent, and natural disasters 3 percent.

Cost Associated with Downtime and Data Loss
Today, most companies can tolerate very little downtime before the company's image, reliability, and market share are impacted negatively. EBay, for instance, received a lot of negative press regarding their recent 22-hour outage. Though the industry standard of downtime is 24 to 36 hours, EBay suffered tangible and intangible losses. The intangible losses are difficult to quantify. An interruption of cash flow, loss of market share, loss of competitive edge, regulatory violations, and loss of investor confidence can occur when inadequate backup and recovery procedures are employed.

The value of lost data varies widely, depending on incident, and can be quantified two ways: 1) The loss of personnel hours spent rebuilding the data, and 2) the permanent loss of irreplaceable data, which could cost the company more and at worst, even threaten survival.

New Methodologies
The most important aspect of DR is that it shortens the amount of time it takes to access data. Old methodologies still contribute to most DR statistics found in industry reports. Incredibly, many companies don't employ any DR methodology. The rationale needs to change, and it is, slowly. Consider companies that insure people, buildings, and equipment, but not the foundation on which business is built…data, a strategic asset. The new methodology assesses IT infrastructure, protects business-critical operations, and provides both backup recovery and backup retrieval solutions.

An alternative approach has found a place within the new methodology: electronic vaulting. With software supplied by the vendor, the service utilizes "delta processing" to recognize changes to data in the backup set, compresses the deltized data to minimize transmission time, encrypts the data to enhance security, and sends the deltized and compressed data to a highly secure off-site vault. Backup sessions are normally scheduled after business hours and may be completed weekly, daily, or more often for mission-critical applications. Retrieval is as simple and effortless as a few simple mouse clicks.

This backup system reduces the worries associated with contacting a systems administrator and handling tapes, cartridges, or diskettes. The data is highly secured yet readily accessible. This service is available for Novell, NT and Unix/Linux backup solutions. Electronic vaulting is not only more convenient, reliable, and efficient than traditional backup systems; it is also surprisingly cost effective.

Businesses can replace personnel, equipment and buildings, but not lost data. Daily electronic backup should be priority one in any company's DR program.

amerivault has provided online backup for business to companies worldwide since 1998. amerivault's commitment to its clients is to offer reliable, automated backup and recovery services to ensure business continuity. By utilizing software and bandwidth, amerivault has implemented an entirely new business model for the traditional offsite data storage and protection industry through the "Protected by amerivault" program. For more information, visit www.amerivault.com.

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