CDP : Addressing the Backup Blues

Satyen Vyas,
Director, Medium Business,
CSMB at Dell India

Though the term “Continuous Data Protection” came into use a decade or so ago, it was not welcomed enthusiastically. However, things are changing fast.  Satyen Vyas, Director, Medium Business, CSMB at Dell India, says, “Continuous Data Protection started out as a solution to provide continuous backup of files but over the years has evolved into providing the same level of data backup capabilities for mail boxes and even database files and logs.”

“CDP solutions have matured through several architectural changes that now make it a sound solution for both SMB and distributed networks,” says Shubhomoy Biswas, Country Director, SonicWall, India & SAARC.    

According to Vijay Mhaskar, Vice-President, Information Management Group, Symantec, “With the kind of information explosion that we see today amongst enterprises, it is important to go beyond the basic backup and more on the relevance of real-time backup.Today's most advanced CDP solutions can deliver recovery points within seconds of a failure or corruption and reduce recovery time dramatically.” He adds, “CDP promises to alleviate legitimate information management pain points that most IT organizations now feel.” 

The way data is created and saved has evolved dramatically over the years, especially with the coming of the mobile computing platform. Aside from threats such as computer viruses, data corruption, mechanical failure, natural disasters and user errors, companies also have to take into account the physical locations and platforms from where data is generated and require backup/protection.  

Employees today are constantly on the move and work from different centres and through different sources which are primarily the workstations, desktops, laptops, etc. According to analysts, the data from all these centres amount to about 60 per cent of an entire corporation's data. And this figure jumps to as high as 90 per cent if you are a small business. All the data the employees are working on is the only copy. If unprotected, then losing this data would be a nightmare and not to mention expensive as it involves time, resources and money. Recreating would be even worse. A survey conducted by The Diffusion Group reveals that the estimated cost for recreating lost data falls in the range of $2,000-$8,000 per MB. 

In the light of the developments that are taking place in the data generation arena, “Data protection technology has evolved from those scheduled at regular intervals to real-time, continuous model where as soon as one hits the save button, files and folders are transferred, typically to a remote location, for protection,” says Arun Dharmalingam, Vice-President, Cisco India & SAARC.  

CDP, over a period of time, has moved from the distinct product category to a subset of Backup and Recovery offerings. It has also been embedded as a feature in the backup and replication solutions. It has been realized that CDP cannot be used for all the data types. There are only a small number of use cases where it can be really used. CDP is most suitable for File-based systems and is popular among the Desktop and Laptop users. 

“The major benefit of Continuous Data Protection is that it backs up a file whenever any change occurs. Depending on the CDP-enabled backup system, you can roll back to file backups as recent as a few moments old,” says Milind Karnad, Country Manager, Tivoli IBM Software Group India/ South Asia.  

The evolution of CDP solutions has been in direct consequence to the changing business trends over the last few years. Over the last 4-5 years, most of the SMEs and enterprises have digitized their knowledge, processes and communication channels. This combined with Web 2.0 collaboration has led to an exponential increase in the amount of data that an organization generates each day.  

The evolution of CDP solutions has been towards securing the mission-critical content in real time and restoration of lost data in the least amount of time. About 40-50% of an organization's content falls under critical data.  

“The primitive solutions started with Disk Level of Snapshot Protection which was soon extended to database and file level protection. After years of experimentations and improvizations, Continuous Data Protection has established itself as the most secure data protection and backup solution,” says Kumar Mitra, Sales Director India & SAARC, Data Protection, Quest Software.  

CDP Solutions for SMEs

According to some estimates, a vast majority of businesses do not fully back up. In the event of failure, they don't successfully recover their data. For SMEs, this can have a devastating impact on their businesses.  

According to one estimate, more than 40 per cent of companies that close down following a disaster never reopen. Of the remaining businesses, at least 25 per cent will be out of business within two years. 

The SME segment has come to the forefront in the last few years in India due to several reasons - government's thrust to the segment, increasing business opportunities in a robust economy, domestic demand, opportunities through globalization, rise of tier-2 and tier-3 cities and towns and momentum in entrepreneurial ventures. As the business and industry has steadily grown, so has competitiveness, which has necessitated the increasing use of Information Technologies to drive a business, manage and operate a business, enhance competitiveness and achieve higher efficiency. 

For SMEs, data protection solutions need to be simple, reliable and affordable while addressing the necessary compliance and security requirements. SMEs must also be in a position to manage the increasing amounts of data. There are many options to explore, but continuous data protection (CDP) is one that is becoming increasingly popular.  

“The Enterprise backup solutions are an integral part of many SMEs and Continuous Data Protection is an option for critical data within the enterprise. CDP-enabled backups are going to see more adoption in the SMEs to protect critical data in the end-user environment,” says Milind of IBM. 

“Continuous Data Protection technology is an effective way of protecting system and data assets against data loss and improves the recovery time for important applications and databases. Since small businesses don't have the staff or the expertise to spend time managing data, the newer technologies such as Continuous Data Protection (CDP) are potential solutions that helps small enterprises to get more intelligent about protecting distributed data,” says Mhaskar of Symantec. 

Small and medium businesses are steadily realizing the power of technology. “We are seeing an increase in the number of customers using technology in innovative ways to enhance their competitiveness and increase their business performance. Technology is gradually being seen more as an enabler rather than a cost,” says Satyen of Dell. 

In reference to CDP, since it is a feature available with most backup software vendors, SMEs are slowly but surely adopting it. The hindrance, if any, is around the basic IT adoption itself.  

There is tremendous scope for increasing IT adoption in the Indian SMB segment. According to the recent industry reports, India has 7.6 million SMBs spanning across a diverse range of industries, sizes, and offerings, each with its own unique objectives and visions -and a common desire to succeed. “We believe there is an opportunity here for us to grow in this segment as the small and medium business owners continue to seek the right technology at the right prices for their growth and our products and solutions fit the bill just right,” opines Satyen.   

Data is central to any business, without which it will be next to impossible to run an organization. Keeping the data safe should be a key strategic priority for any business. Though SMBs do not create large volumes of data as enterprises, their requirements with respect to protection and recovery of lost data remain the same as those of big organizations.  

Given the importance of safeguarding data, one would imagine that SMBs would have put in a robust plan to protect their data, but that is not the case. Capital concerns and to a lesser extent, the availability of in-house expertise to manage the process are among the few reasons SMBs have not fully embraced data protection in the organization.  

“In the light of the above, vendors need to develop solutions that are both cost-effective and easy-to-use. Cisco has made great headway in this regard and the company has developed a whole host of solutions for SMBs in particular, from the ground up with 'plug-n-play' capability,” says Dharmalingam of Cisco.  

There is a clear shift in the market by vendors who are bringing CDP solutions to satisfy the growing needs of SMEs.

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Safe Bet for VARs 

There is a tremendous scope for reseller community in deployment of CDP products. “They can help customize the product implementation to address complex customer requirements. They can also build their offerings around this product by building customized dashboard and addressing the complex reporting requirements,” says Milind.  

Today, a channel partner is the customer's go to person when it comes to understanding the range of technologies in the market, the best option suited to meet their specific needs and actually be present throughout the sales cycle from pre-sale to the actual deployment phase.  “Symantec focusses on empowering and enabling our channel partners with tools and resources that will help them address customer's issues and find solutions for their unique problem,” says Mhaskar.  

Channel is an important part of delivering our solutions to our customers and has the opportunity to add value throughout the value chain from sizing the solution correctly to deployment. They have an in-depth understanding of the client's actual environment and give valuable suggestions for adoption of the right solution. We continue to engage our partners with regular training updates so that they could deliver Dell's Best Value Solutions to our customers.  

For more contact: Deepak Singh  
edit@varindia.com