I live in the San Francisco Bay Area - home to expensive gas, long commutes, and rising bridge tolls.I’m lucky. I commute to work by the Transbay bus system and telecommute from home one day a week.But many other workers have no other option but to commute by car to their workplace. In the words of the great Chaka Khan, “I feel for you.”With the rise in gas prices, commuters and the companies they work for must be wondering if the “virtual workplace” is for them.
For those companies feeling pressure from current and prospective employees to expand your telecommuting program, do it.But before you do, get prepared.Bill Detwiler from TechRepublic, wrote a short article about the topic and provides several links to resources on how to get your IT department prepared for remote employees.
What Bill doesn’t mention are the additional considerations to think about when adopting this type of technology.You may decide to upgrade your VPN to accommodate the increase in remote workers but the VPN can also be your company’s communication lifeline in the event of a disruption or disaster.You can mitigate risk by including a few disaster recovery scenarios during your planning, testing and implementation phases of your project and you can do so with little effort.While disaster recovery isn’t the primary focus of the implementation, it can be part of it.
If you’re finding it difficult to change the mindset of your management team to dedicate proper resources toward IT disaster recovery, it is definitely possible to piggy back onto other projects, like remote workers, a VPN upgrade or other IT project. A low incremental cost project can help plant the seed and from there you may start seeing a change in management’s thinking.
I just finished watching a presentation by Alessandro Perilli at SYS-CON’s Virtualization Conference and Expo 2007 East.It’s packed with useful info like the 9 challenges of virtualization and virtualization emerging trends.I was especially interested hearing what Alessandro had to say about emerging trends which is at the end of the presentation.According to Alessandro, over the next 3 years there will be an increase in application virtualization as well as an increase in vendors who provide SaaS and infrastructure leasing solutions.As you can imagine, these trends made my ears perk up.
While Alessandro broke the emerging trends down into different features, Simply Continuous has bundled them all into one solution specifically designed to address IT disaster recovery needs. The solution is called AppAlive. It’s nice to know that we’re part of the emerging trend although I’m not sure “infrastructure leasing solutions” makes great marketing speak. There are a lot of businesses out there that would like to open a 2nd datacenter and utilize virtualization technology but don’t have the expertise or resources to maintain it. That’s why AppAlive and our other services make so much sense to companies who would like the benefits of a 2nd datacenter with virtualization but don’t want to significantly increase their IT costs.
To learn how Simply Continuous can remotely protect and recovery your business applications, visit our AppAlive services page.I give AppAlive two thumbs up but I’m clearly biased.
If you’re like most IT executives who are relying on tape backup as the crux of your disaster recovery strategy, you may agree, it’s not much of a strategy at all.And perhaps you are left wondering late at night, “How are we going to keep the email up and running in the event of fill in the blank?”Soon after what seems to be a passing thought, those OTHER fires consume much of your time.Where DO those fires and crises come from anyway?
“Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment.Then ignored, they cause the next fires and crises,” writes Getting Things Done author David Allen. Mr. Allen wrote a great piece in a recent issue of the Huffington Post entitled “The Curse of the Eternally Urgent.”His tips are relevant to anyone who maybe putting something off for tomorrow instead of completing the task/project today.Sound like someone you know?
After chatting with a few IT guys, I’m starting to understand how putting off disaster recovery planning is easy to do.Especially when you’re working at a growing company and those pesky fires appear.You know what worked in the beginning (i.e. tapes), won’t work today.But take Mr. Allen’s advice and complete the project in a series of action items. “I think you’ll find that many big and important projects have a two-minute-or-less next action on them. You can move several big and important projects forward, and feel better about making progress, by doing a few two-minute-or-less next actions,” writes Allen.
Before you rush off to design the perfect disaster recovery plan (or better yet, outsource it to experts like Simply Continuous), read Mr. Allen’s article.
A co-worker of mine asked “Is disaster recovery fun?”Now I didn’t want to say “no” but I didn’t have proof that it really could be fun…until I found the following VMware video on YouTube.I guess disaster recovery with virtualization technology and a catchy tune can make almost anything fun. Check it out.
What is DPV?No, it’s not a new drug that promises to grow hair on your balding head or a cure for eyes that tear too much.At Simply Continuous, we’re a practical bunch.We’re experts at solving your IT disaster recovery and business continuity needs and you can’t get more practical than that. DPV stands for Data Protect Vault.Data Protect Vault for Data Domain is a hosted service that deduplicates, replicates, and stores business-critical data offsite where it will be readily available whenever and wherever you need it.With Data Protect Vault, customer data is securely stored with NO tapes, software, or equipment to manage.
As you may know, the RTO for companies using tape backup is pretty slow, but upgrading to a more responsive backup and recovery program can be way too expensive. We wondered, “how can we make offsite backup easy, reliable, AND affordable?” Well, with Data Domain as our partners, we think we came up with a pretty handy solution for growing companies who rely on offsite tape backup.And we did it without you having to break the bank.
When approached by vendors offering “Disaster Recovery” or “Disaster Preparedness” solutions, the first thought of many people is “I have more pressing problems than worrying about the next great earthquake/tsunami/flood/apocalypse.” Much to the consternation of DR/DP vendors, such thoughts are usually correct.
When most people visualize the word disaster, they think of major catastrophes, such as the Loma Prieta earthquake, hurricane Katrina, or the recent Southern California wildfires. While disasters like these are of high impact, meaning that they have the potentially to significantly effect the viability of a person, family or business, they’re of low frequency, and though it’s nice to be prepared for the impending meteor strike, there are probably better uses for one’s much time and effort.
This doesn’t mean one should ignore Disaster Recovery, it simply means that Disaster Recovery is generally a misnomer, a series of activities that have been incorrectly labeled. What most vendors are really selling, what the services offered really provide, is Disruption Recovery. Unlike disasters, disruptions happen with great frequency.They’re usually less catastrophic, but their net impact for a given business can be severe. A disruptive event might include a server disk-crash, a power failure, a water-main break, or any number of hundreds of day-to-day events that can cause a business to loose the ability to operate. Preparing for disruption is generally cost-effective and rational.
The steps taken for Disaster Recovery, including backing up and replicating critical data, determining the core assets of a business and determining how to continue operations if the office becomes unavailable, are all the same activities one needs to undertake for Disruption Recovery; it’s only the images evoked by the words “disaster” and “disruption” that are different. But language is a powerful thing. If DR vendors want to ensure that they’re thought of as a necessary service rather than an optional one, they need to start working on moving the capital d away from the improbable and towards the common.
ComputerWorld’s Sept 10 article on CDP is a good starting point for this emerging trend. It’s an example a technology that appeals to all, but is best to implement with relatively mature IT practices in place.
There are a lot of businesses out there that would like to open a 2nd datacenter and utilize virtualization technology but don’t have the expertise or resources to maintain it. That’s why AppAlive and our other services make so much sense to companies who would like the benefits of a 2nd datacenter with virtualization but don’t want to significantly increase their IT costs.