I D C

E X E C U T I V E

B R I E F

Enterprise Disaster Recovery for

the SMB Market: Taking Advantage
of Cloud Storage
October 2010
By Carla Arend
Sponsored by Acronis

The Evolution of the Disaster Recovery Market

Data protection and recovery are mature technologies today, and
businesses of all shapes and sizes are busy protecting their data in
any way they can. But due to differences in data volume, complexity
of IT infrastructure, and availability of budget and staff, there are big
differences in the sophistication of data protection between large and
small businesses.

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The underlying dynamics of the market, such as continuous data

growth and the risk of natural disasters, are similar for all
organizations, but large enterprises are typically faster adopters of
new technology and, as a result, are able to deploy state-of-the-art
data protection and disaster recovery solutions that are generally out
of reach of smaller businesses. This, though, is starting to change.
Through the advance of cloud storage, modern data protection and
disaster recovery solutions are becoming available to all companies
at affordable price points and with a focus on simplicity and user
friendliness.
There are three key reasons for this:

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Several new data protection features like granular recovery, data

deduplication, and better management have been evolving in recent
years. Using them has significant advantages in terms of better
protection against disasters, lower storage cost, slower data growth,
and more control over business data.

The cloud computing model is bringing complex enterprise-class

storage technology to the market through intuitive interfaces that are
easy to use without necessarily requiring IT specialists and in a
subscription-based business model, thus making it accessible and
affordable for smaller businesses.

The combination of on-premises storage and cloud storage is a natural

evolution of the storage infrastructure, which combines the reliability
and speed of recovery of an on-premises approach with the flexibility
and added protection of an offsite model.

In this Executive Brief, IDC discusses the trends, benefits, and

considerations that are relevant in the decision process around
online backup and cloud storage to enable you to determine if now is
the right time to look at adding cloud storage to your storage
infrastructure.

Data Protection Trends: On-Premises and Online

The data protection market continues to evolve at a fast pace.
Storage vendors are constantly developing and improving products
and services, such as data deduplication and image-based backup
and recovery, enabling customers to respond to the market
dynamics of data growth (30%50% a year) and a general
virtualization of both servers and desktops.

On-Premises Data Protection

Today's on-premises data protection solution typically consists of
several different steps:

Backup is used to have a disaster recovery copy of all business data.

This data has traditionally been stored on tape but is increasingly
stored on disk for better reliability and speed of recovery. Typically,
larger organizations will have one copy onsite and one copy offsite at a
secondary location.

Snapshots are used to take a point-in-time copy of an IT system. They

are increasingly forming the base for backup, as customers are doing
backups from the snapshot instead of the production system directly,
in order to offload the backup process off the production system for
performance reasons and to provide enough time for the backup to
complete. Snapshots can protect the application, the data, and the
operating system in a physical and virtual server environment.

Data deduplication is used to reduce the data volume before it is

backed up or saved to disk, by identifying duplicate files or even blocks
of data, which are only saved once instead of multiple times. This
significantly reduces the amount of data that needs storing.

Policy-based management is key to ensure that all systems are

protected and that they are managed in the same way across the
entire IT infrastructure.

However, the one piece that is missing for many smaller

organizations is the fact that in order to be protected against natural
disasters, they also need offsite backups. A secondary site for
disaster recovery is expensive and in many cases unaffordable.
Backup tapes can be sent offsite, but where and how quickly do you
want to recover when disaster strikes?

Online Backup
Recently, cloud storage has come into the picture and opens up new
possibilities for smaller organizations to take their disaster recovery
strategy one step further. Offsite storage and recovery is now within
reach, through easy-to-use subscription-based services, without the
need for additional hardware and datacenter investments.

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There are two different ways to use cloud storage:

Online backup or cloud storage, where the cloud is used as an

additional storage target. In addition to backing up to disk or to tape,
you can now also back up to the cloud, for example, to storage space
provided by your service provider, which is located outside your own
premises. Therefore you can access additional storage space to cover
peak workloads or for disaster recovery purposes. This option typically
complements your on-premises backup installation and sometimes
replaces the process of sending backup tapes or disks offsite.

Backup as a service, which means that you subscribe to a backup

service and don't need to install software on-premises, as both the
software and the storage space are delivered from your chosen
provider.

Both options provide the newest storage technologies as a service

and enable you to take advantage of technological progress without
investing in new hardware and therefore omitting huge upfront
investment.

The Third Way: Hybrid Solution Combining OnPremises Data Protection With Cloud Storage
IDC observes that most organizations are likely to choose a hybrid
model where they combine the convenience and performance of onpremises backup with the flexibility and extra protection of a cloud
storage solution.

Local on-premises backup continues to be the standard for data

protection due to its potential to offer fast backup and recovery,
particularly when it is stored on disk. Retrieval of individual files or
whole systems is much faster when done over a LAN instead of a
WAN.

Adding cloud storage enables smaller organizations to add an extra

dimension to their disaster recovery plan which was not available to
them before: a secondary location. Some organizations continuously
send their backup data to the cloud, to ensure redundancy of data,
but most organizations only send one backup per week to the cloud
for example, to have a backup of backups that they can use for
disaster recovery purposes. The ideal schedule for sending data to the
cloud depends entirely on the specific data profile of every customer.

IDC expects hybrid models to emerge as the prevalent solution as

local on-premises and cloud solutions complement each other well.
Recovery is faster from an on-premises solution but if the primary
site is subject to a natural disaster or full-scale outage the only
chance of recovery would be from data and systems state
information stored in an offsite location.

Benefits of
Solutions

On-Premises,

Online,

and

Hybrid

Each approach has its distinct benefits and when considering

extending your backup and disaster recovery strategy into the cloud
it is important to understand the benefits of each solution.

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On-premises backup. Doing your backups on your own premises

ensures good performance, as backups and recoveries run over the
local area network (LAN). This is particularly important for large data
volumes, as it enables you to ensure the security of your IT
infrastructure and maintain control of your data (also for compliance
purposes).

Online backup. Online backup services provide an additional storage

target to tape or disk, and an offsite location for disaster recovery or
long-term archiving purposes. They are run under a subscriptionbased business model, which eliminates upfront IT investments and
provides additional storage capacity flexibly as the business need
arises.

Hybrid solution. Hybrid models combine the best of two worlds.

Instead of discarding your current data protection products and
processes, you can extend them to the cloud, adding new technology
without inducing much risk. The biggest advantage of a hybrid solution
is that it can be managed from existing on-premises software, so that
businesses remain in control of their data and can manage their data
seamlessly across on-premises and cloud.

Considerations
A recent IDC survey found that 26% of respondents are using cloud
storage, at least in parts of their infrastructure, because of the
flexible business model and the ease of deployment and ease of
use. But when you are evaluating a cloud storage offering, there are
some considerations that need to be addressed:

Security and privacy. The biggest concern when sending your data to
the cloud is the security at the provider site. Is the provider living up to
your required security and privacy standards? Look into this: it can
actually be a good thing because most cloud storage providers
acknowledge the importance of strong security and privacy measures
and are experts in the field. It is important to check that you and your
provider have the same security and privacy standards.

Location/country. The second biggest concern is the location of the

data, which means the location of the cloud storage provider's
datacenters. Not all providers have datacenters in each country where
they are offering the service. It is important that you know if your
national data protection law requires data storage in your own
country or allows you to store data in other countries.

Compliance. Are you still compliant with your national and industryspecific regulations when you start using a cloud storage provider? It is
important that you can document that you are still managing your
data, independent of its location both on-premises and online, that
you can provide access to it for your national authorities (for example,
tax and customs), and that your provider lives up to the security and
privacy requirements that apply to your company. Managing across
physical and virtual environments as well as on-premises and cloudbased data protection infrastructures is key to ensure and
demonstrate compliance to your auditors.

Bandwidth. When you start sending your backup data across a wide
area network (WAN), or indeed the Internet, you will find that backups

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and recoveries can take a long time. Therefore it is important to use

technologies that either compress the data or only send incremental
data changes across, to minimize network traffic. Therefore
complementing an onsite solution with a cloud storage model makes
sense to avoid bandwidth-related slow recoveries.

Conclusion
Right now is a good time to look at new storage technologies and
storage business models as you might be able to ensure better data
protection, business continuity, and disaster recovery while realizing
significant cost savings and efficiency gains. Both onsite and online
technologies have been significantly developed in recent years, so it
is not a question of either on-premises or cloud storage.
Hybrid models are emerging as a best practice for complementing
the proven benefits of on-premises data protection with the additional
benefits of cloud storage and cost effectively adding a secondary site
to your disaster recovery plan. They are also a non-disruptive way of
reaping the benefits of cloud technology while maintaining
management and control of your data.

C O P Y R I G H T

N O T I C E

The analyst opinion, analysis, and research results presented in this

IDC Executive Brief are drawn directly from the more detailed studies
published in IDC Continuous Intelligence Services. Any IDC
information that is to be used in advertising, press releases, or
promotional materials requires prior written approval from IDC.
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Copyright 2010 IDC. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized.

2010 IDC