Cost-Control Through IT Intelligence
Written by Eran FarajunApril 25, 2014
If you haven’t started using data recovery intelligence yet to elevate IT infrastructure uptime, then it may be time to begin. With the advent of recovery tracking technology to identify system failures throughout the enterprise, organizations now have the ability to use this data resource to enhance business continuity.
Big Data enabled applications continue to make their presence felt across business categories, allowing for new and innovative solutions that address longstanding business problems. Data recovery tracking is built upon this new area and promises to enhance infrastructure monitoring for organizations plagued by regular system failures by providing a combination of signals and user feedback as data recoveries occur.
A key advantage of recovery tracking is that it assists IT teams by providing previously unavailable information, allowing IT professionals to take control of data loss events by addressing the reasons behind them. Recovery analytics are at the heart of this new intelligence-driven revolution in IT insight and facilitates infrastructure and process revitalization.
Recovery analytics identify which systems fail and the reasons behind these events. With this insight, users are able to better understand the reasons behind the non-performance of corporate enterprise IT systems. A more finely tuned IT environment will fail fewer times and require fewer data recoveries, supporting increased employee productivity for higher output operations. The transparency enabled by recovery analytics enlightens IT professionals responsible for business continuity who have been in the dark with respect to system and process reliability failures.
If used wisely, this information can lead to more resilient operations with robust configurations that resist downtime caused by environmentals, hardware/software configuration issues, improperly matched applications and hardware, untrained users, increased business activity on ill-equipped systems, and legacy system limitations. Improvements result in enhanced efficiency and performance-based deliverables, one of which is greater user control of billing for back-up software and services. By leveraging recovery analytics, IT professionals achieve better infrastructure-wide oversight over the costs and reliability of their data protection infrastructure.
The Impact of Intelligence on Cost Control
An important goal for IT managers is to have consistent, predictable IT costs that better manage expenditures. Recovery tracking technology collects detailed information on data loss and recovery events and provides an outline of everything needed to better control data recovery activities and costs. This includes the number of recoveries performed annually, the source of the data loss, the amount of data recovered, and the reason behind these recoveries. This information may help in recognizing inefficiencies in back-up and recovery processes and hardware to help streamline backup and recovery for greater uptime and cost containment. Organizations can use recovery tracking data to identify the weaknesses in their infrastructure and take proactive steps and cost-effectively correct issues prior to the next data catastrophe.
Taking Control
As enterprise IT managers are charged with protecting valuable corporate data, ensuring against data loss is not always a given. Having fingertip access to more comprehensive recovery analytics can empower users to achieve improved data availability and manageability. Recovery tracking technology can help obtain the vital information needed to prevent controllable data loss from occurring, putting control back in the hands of administrators. The objective is to be proactive as it allows users to address the root causes of system downtime and data loss to prevent future events — not just protect data and react to unexpected data loss events. Often, through the information received through recovery tracking technology, users can intercept data loss problems at the source.
The advantages of having a back-up solution with recovery tracking technology is that it provides enterprises with the ability to chart their organization’s data recovery events via a single interface for easy analysis and response. This is where users can identify patterns of data loss that can be used to preemptively protect the organization against data loss. Companies can also rely on these analytics to help benchmark operations against others in the industry, geographic region, and/or business size. For example, a company might use these statistics to compare against the best in the business or track progress on continuous improvements to one’s IT practices.
The Bottom Line
Up until now, there has been little to no empirical data available that details the real reasons behind data loss. With the emergence of Big Data are previously unavailable capabilities and insight into this once shadowy area of IT. The key benefits include greater cost control and recovery prevention by proactive management of IT systems and user processes.
The bottom line is that recovery-based tracking technology is revolutionizing the way that IT professionals are conducting, measuring, licensing, and managing back-up and recovery operations. The technology is driving greater efficiencies through powerful analytics about the state of backup and the IT infrastructure under protection. This is helping organizations bring down the cost of data protection, setting the standard for how enterprises approach back-up and recovery operations now and in the future.
Eran Farajun is executive vice president of Asigra. A thought leader in recovery-based pricing for backup and recovery, he is responsible for Asigra’s long-term strategic initiatives for the company’s cloud-based data recovery software.
