For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Controlling Storage Cost Amid High Growth

by Andrew Reichman, Stephanie Balaouras, February 3, 2010

Storage capacity has been growing fast for the past five years, and an end to the recession is only likely to spur further expansion as projects are re-funded. Recent data shows storage commanding a higher portion of the overall IT budget, but the amount . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

State Of Enterprise Disaster Recovery Preparedness: Q3 2009

by Stephanie Balaouras, November 4, 2009

Although disaster recovery (DR) was once considered an expensive insurance policy for rare but catastrophic events such as hurricanes and terrorist activity, Forrester survey data suggests that enterprises across North America and Europe are now moving . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Consolidated Backup Strategies For Remote Sites

by Stephanie Balaouras, October 30, 2009

A remote site can be as small as a branch office location with five employees or as large as a regional sales office with 50 employees. Regardless of a company's size, end users are creating and storing critical data at these sites. In some industries . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Preparing For A Pandemic: What You Need To Know About H1N1

by Stephanie Balaouras, Chris McClean, October 15, 2009

The likelihood and impact of a pandemic are impossible to predict with much accuracy. Regardless, history tells us that there is a potential for widespread and costly disruption — especially for those who aren't adequately prepared. In May 2009, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

How The Cloud Will Transform Disaster Recovery Services

Tape-Based Recovery Services Are Going The Way Of The Dinosaur

by Stephanie Balaouras, July 24, 2009

Regardless of company size or industry, your business can't afford downtime, but it's hard to justify improving your disaster recovery (DR) capabilities when you're under pressure to cut IT costs and when DR is seen as an expensive insurance policy. There . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Use Deduplication To Store More With Less

Dedupe Your Backups Today, But Plan For Other Environments

by Stephanie Balaouras, July 10, 2009

While the cost of disk has declined significantly over the past five years, you still can't call it cheap at thousands of dollars per terabyte (TB). IT professionals struggle to keep up with 30% to 40% annual data growth while simultaneously creating . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Backup, Q2 2009

by Stephanie Balaouras, June 26, 2009

Backup is one of the most critical day-to-day responsibilities for IT operations. You must have a recent backup of your critical data to recover from accidental deletions, system crashes, disk failures, and data corruption. But backup is complex, error . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Business Continuity Management People And Communications Trends

by Stephanie Balaouras, June 21, 2009

An overview of the people and communication trends revealed by the Forrester/Disaster Recovery Journal Business Continuity Preparedness Survey, Q4 2008.

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Protecting Email With The Cloud

How Cloud Services Can Play A Role In Message Continuity And Recovery

by Stephanie Balaouras, Christopher Voce, June 8, 2009

Ensuring that your users can access email and keep business moving in the event of a disaster is critical, but it can be complex and costly. Traditional methods carry heavy facility, hardware, software, and personnel requirements, and the capital and . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Disaster Recovery, Q1 2009

by Stephanie Balaouras, March 20, 2009

Whether it's a power grid failure, ice storm, or Category Five hurricane, when disaster strikes, IT must have disaster recovery plans in place to ensure the continuity of IT systems that support critical business processes. If IT isn't prepared, it will . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Businesses Take BC Planning More Seriously

But Take The BC Readiness Of Strategic Partners For Granted

by Stephanie Balaouras, February 26, 2009

Business continuity (BC) planning consists of three critical phases: business impact analysis (BIA), risk assessment (RA), and plan documentation. In our Forrester/Disaster Recovery Journal Business Continuity Preparedness Survey, Q4 2008, we found that . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

More Businesses Now Institutionalize Business Continuity Management

by Stephanie Balaouras, January 13, 2009

In our Forrester/Disaster Recovery Journal Business Continuity Preparedness Survey, Q4 2008, 89% of the business continuity (BC) decision-makers and influencers we surveyed said that BC had executive-level support. In addition, about two-thirds of respondents . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

State Of Enterprise Disaster Recovery Preparedness: Q3 2008

It's Time For Enterprises To Move Beyond DR To IT Service Continuity

by Stephanie Balaouras, January 7, 2009

Conventional wisdom suggests that North American enterprises spend more on IT disaster recovery (DR) than their European counterparts because of the greater risk in the United States for catastrophic natural disasters. But survey data and customer interviews . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Archiving, Q4 2008

by Stephanie Balaouras, December 8, 2008

Forrester clients report that data storage is doubling every 12 to 18 months. Not only is data growth exploding, but companies also need to figure out how to retain this data for regulatory compliance or legal discovery purposes. As a result, more and . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

CISOs Must Take The Lead On Business Resiliency

Finding Common Ground Among Business Continuity, IT Disaster Recovery, And Information Security

by Stephanie Balaouras, Chris McClean, October 21, 2008

Aggressive global competition, greater service demands, more restrictive regulatory requirements, and increasingly rigid corporate oversight all raise the expectations for achieving and demonstrating business resiliency. Business continuity, IT disaster . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Case Study: Vodafone UK Uses Business Continuity As A Competitive Advantage

by Stephanie Balaouras, October 8, 2008

In the highly competitive and regulated industry of mobile communications, business continuity preparedness is critical to ensuring the continuous availability of the wireless services and to bringing new services to market as quickly as possible. Vodafone . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Inquiry Insights: Business Continuity, Q3 2008

by Stephanie Balaouras, September 22, 2008

Every year, Forrester receives more than 265 inquiries on topics related to business resiliency such as business continuity, IT continuity, IT high availability, and data backup. Between August 2007 and August 2008, 62 end users made inquiries primarily . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Q&A: Top Questions About VMware Backup

by Stephanie Balaouras, Galen Schreck, July 14, 2008

Enterprise adoption of x86 server virtualization is mainstream. Deployment is no longer limited to application development and testing environments, and chances are your organization is virtualizing mission- and business-critical production environments. . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Emergency Communication: What To Do When You Declare A Disaster

by Stephanie Balaouras, July 8, 2008

It's 3 a.m. and you've just declared a disaster at one of your sites. How will you coordinate the efforts and monitor the progress of the response team? How will you notify hundreds, potentially thousands, of employees, partners, and customers? How will . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

What Your Business Can Learn About Disaster Recovery From Financial Institutions

by Stephanie Balaouras, July 8, 2008

Disaster recovery preparedness is an increasingly critical IT function. In our Forrester/Disaster Recovery Journal October 2007 Global Recovery Preparedness Survey, 87% of the disaster recovery decision-makers we surveyed said that it was "critical" or . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: Disaster Recovery Services Providers, Q2 2008

HP, SunGard, And IBM Lead, With ICM Close Behind

by Stephanie Balaouras, June 5, 2008

In Forrester's 64-criteria evaluation of disaster recovery vendors, we found that Hewlett-Packard (HP), SunGard, and IBM lead the pack because of their breadth of services, inventory of heterogeneous IT hardware, and global presence. In the UK market, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Checklist For Data Center Site Selection

by Stephanie Balaouras, Galen Schreck, April 17, 2008

We receive numerous client inquiries from infrastructure and operations professionals who are considering building new data centers or leasing space from collocation providers. There are many architectural considerations when designing a new data center, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Building The Business Case For Disaster Recovery Spending

by Stephanie Balaouras, April 3, 2008

Your bill for disaster recovery preparedness can run into the millions of dollars depending on the level of continuity and the size of your environment. Since these investments are about cost avoidance and don't typically reduce the total cost of IT ownership, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

2008 Trends In Backup And Data Protection

by Stephanie Balaouras, April 2, 2008

Backup remains as problematic as ever, but there are several emerging trends in technology and functional convergence that should address some of the biggest challenges: increasing capacities, shrinking backup windows, increasing recovery point requirements, . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Market Overview: Backup Software-As-A-Service

The First Of Many IT Ops-Focused SaaS Offerings

by Stephanie Balaouras, February 19, 2008

Backup is a struggle for both enterprises and small and medium-size businesses (SMBs). It's a complex ecosystem of backup software, networks, servers, disk arrays, and tape systems. Many firms have difficulty completing backups in the time available, . . .