An article that appeared back in 2009 on the Forbes website commented on the questions that executive management teams are asking about proposals that they are receiving from their IT departments. Their uncertainty is probably only heightened when their IT departments bring forward a proposal that recommends a seemingly new process that involves the deployment of lesser understood technologies like deduplication and replication. (read more)

Deduplication contributes to expedited backups and recoveries, high backup and recovery success rates and frees up IT staff time associated with managing these tasks. Yet in the face of these benefits that deduplication offers, many midsize organizations still continue to use other technology as their backup target, citing cost and complexity as their primary reasons for not adopting deduplication. It is these specific obstacles that the new DXi6500 family from Quantum seeks to overcome. (read more)

An organization can come up with any number of reasons why it does not encrypt data stored to tape. Encryption is too hard or expensive to implement. The management of the encryption keys is too complicated. The business does not have the time or manpower to deal with encryption right now. These are all valid excuses for not implementing encryption. However, if storing sensitive data to tape remains a part of an organization's long term data management and retention plan, then the growing list of federal and state regulations means it can no longer ignore the need to encrypt its data. (read more)

Changes in buying behavior among companies are probably a big motivation behind Quantum's recent announcement to include esXpress backup software with its disk-based DXi-Series backup systems. While most mid-size companies and larger are looking to deploy disk-based backup that incorporates deduplication into their backup infrastructures (which the DXi-Series certainly addresses) it is not always that simple. (read more)

"We were getting to the point where we had more and more data and less and less time to back it up", says Mike Fishell, Director of Information Technology for Hay House. "And then there were the increasing expenses of doing the backups. Between time, money and storage space, we needed a new solution." (read more)

"We need cheaper and simpler backups and recoveries for our remote and branch offices." That statement is repeated more often by mid-size companies as they seek solutions that take the pain and management overhead associated with backup and recovery out of their remote offices without breaking the budget or requiring heroic efforts to implement. This is exactly the type of scenario that the recently announced DXi2500-D appliance and version 3.0 of Quantum Vision™ Software from Quantum is designed to address. (read more)

Back in March I received a call from a records management provider in the upstate New York area who was inquiring, "How do I get started in providing disk-based backup for my current clients?" This records management provider currently only stores paper and tape in his company's facilities but rightly recognizes that there is a growing trend towards disk-based backup and did not want to be left out in the cold. But he was wondering what options were available in the market that he could offer his prospective clients. (read more)

Everyone is quick to tout the cost-savings that server virtualization provides - less server hardware, lower heating and cooling costs, smaller data center footprints, better utilization of existing hardware. In many respects, it's like a dream come true from a cost savings perspective for many organizations. But successfully implementing server virtualization is another story as it requires organizations do more than just remove the shrink wrap on the software, install it and then watch the savings pile up. (read more)

Organizations tend to give insufficient thought to the protection of an application before it is deployed. Too often it is only after the application is developed or purchased and put into production that the organization takes the time to consider the protection of the application's data and, even then, it is usually not a major problem to implement. As organizations look to virtualize more of their physical machines that are hosting these applications, waiting until the application is in production before deciding how to best protect it creates new sets of problems. (read more)

The folks at Quantum recently announced that they had cracked the code for Oracle RMAN, allowing their DXi deduplication appliances to screen out the metadata in RMAN files and greatly increase their dedupe results (read more)