Life Beyond Data Loss: DR Solutions To The Rescue

With the progress of science and technology in the global domain, IT has
become an integral part of all processes of life. Ranging from building
computation models on binary to space missions, IT has been playing one of the
leading roles everywhere, often guiding crucial decisions regarding project
feasibility and implementation. IT is driving even important weather missions
like global precipitation measurement or finding the pollution level in a city.
With talks around the corner about global warming, its implications and the
challenges before mankind, IT has started playing its own part in this realm as
well.

With most of the activities now based on complex computation models and
securing the 'soft data' on the network and data silos, handling disasters, both
natural as well as man-made has started to evolve around it.

The need for disaster recovery

Rough estimates show that digital data is predicted to grow tenfold in five
years time. Organizations rely on the data to carry on daily business
operations. Hence, loss of data equals to loss of business and potential loss of
an extra opportunity. Under no circumstances, business firms today are ready to
lose or sacrifice data and there lies the whole concept of disaster management.
Then it comes into effect with IT playing the pivotal role. "Safeguarding data
is critical for any organization. Preparing in advance for unforeseen accidents
can save the organization from a disaster," said Krishnan Thyagarajan, MD, Quest
Software India explaining the need to have a disaster management solution in
place.

The Indian scenario

Realizing the importance of handling emergency situations while securing
data at disposal, the Government of India has finally woken up to the call,
although late, forming the National Disaster Management cell under the Ministry
of Home Affairs. Effective in guiding the states to withstand the negative
forces of nature as well as man-made calamities, the cell has been playing a
pivotal role in making the nation more responsive to natural threats. "The term
disaster management really got popular after the 9/11 incident in the US. A
feeling to secure business as well as ensure business continuity was felt
suddenly and business firms as well as nations began to look into it seriously,"
noted PK Gupta, Director and Chief Architect, BRS Practice-APJ, EMC.

In the Indian aspect, sector-wise, the BFSI seems to be the early adopters of
this solution realizing the needs to secure and access data even in times of
emergency situations. "The financial sector in India is at par with the disaster
management solutions across South-east Asia although the Indian government has
been a late adopter. The level of development in terms of data recovery and
access is such that even cloud computing has found its way into the disaster
management concept in India," Gupta added.

Ensuring business continuity

Although data recovery and access from remote locations during an emergency
situation is the primary objective for an enterprise implying business
continuity, the two are not synonymous and a clear distinction exists between
the two. While business continuity plan refers to the means and ways by which a
loss of business or a potential loss may be avoided, disaster recovery deals
with the entire process from restoration of systems with the software support
and network connections to full functionality in a hostile external environment.
However, with data becoming the prime focus and access of the same across
locales, disaster management scenario in India as of now is limited to ensuring
business continuity and flow even during emergency situations. "A business
continuance plan consists of risk analysis, contingency plan, and a disaster
recovery plan that address the recovery and data protection needs of
business-critical applications," said Sumit Mukhija, National Sales
Manager-Datacenter, Cisco (India and SAARC).

The process of data recovery as part of disaster management is quite simple
and can be ensured by following four major steps. In the first place, management
commitment to data recovery is most important as it is from here that the entire
plan for a data recovery team arises. In the second place, effective planning
needs to be made with rational calculations while deciding on the Recovery Time
Objective and Recovery Point Objective. "The planning stage is the most crucial
step in setting up a disaster management IT framework. One has to consider the
business applications and analyze the detailed needs to ensure business
continuity. Also, applications need to be defined under correct parameters,"
suggested Gupta. In the third stage, deployment takes place based on planning
and then the testing phase needs to be undertaken. "The testing phase is very
important. After the planning and deployment stages have been dealt with, one
has to ensure that the whole model works at the right time when it is needed.
The recovery drill needs to be tested and ensuring functionality needs to be
checked," Gupta concluded.

The Indian complexity: The SP perspective

The scenario in India is one of the most complex ones in terms of disaster
recovery. Major corporate as well as IT firms have put into motion a disaster
management team, often placing their data servers, storage and related back up
abroad. Leading corporate giants as well as SMBs are opting for other related
backup solutions implementing a part of the disaster management portfolio.

Virtualization and cloud computing have become the new buzzwords in the
technological domain and firms are often opting for virtualization of the
servers implying a partial deployment of disaster management. Although it has
often been argued that virtualization and cloud is pulling up the feasibility
and practicability of disaster management by implementing third-party hosting
services, virtualization is practically eating into the market of disaster
management solutions. "Disaster management space across the globe is generic. It
not only implies handling natural calamities and setting up the infrastructure,
but ensuring business continuity and data management as well. This space has
received a major thrust as it is a norm for most enterprises while bidding for
tenders to have a disaster recovery team and infrastructure," said Umesh Shah of
Mumbai-based Orient Technologies. Highlighting the same fact, Saket Kapur of
Delhi-based Green Vision said, "The overall scenario in India looks progressive.
The government has constituted a dedicated disaster management team and also
privately owned companies have opted for this kind of solution."

However, other SPs in India have a different version to offer. Sharing his
thought about disaster management solutions, KV Jagannath of Hyderabad-based
Choice Solutions said, "There are too few handpicked companies in India looking
for business continuity solutions. However, what really needs to be highlighted
is that most of the companies are looking for a sort of back up and alternate
solution rather than a complete and dedicated disaster management one. Mostly,
the clients opt for a scaled down version of their datacenter which can act as a
backup in times of emergency." Sharing similar views, Edward Jeevan of Bengaluru-based
Binary Systems said, "Disaster management has not picked up the way it should
have picked up. Although it continues to be one of the most viable business
opportunities, nothing much has been done in this space. Whenever disaster
strikes hard in the nation, urgency is felt for implementing disaster management
teams in place. People felt the same way during the last Mumbai terror attacks.
However, it fades off soon and many large corporates till this day do not have a
proper disaster management team in place."

The future of disaster management

Moving over to the predicted market trend and the potential it has in India,
the situation looks quite promising though. "India and China continue to feature
as the top-most destinations for data recovery. The cost involved in disaster
management implementation has now decreased considerable by 1/10th of the
previous estimates, and consciousness over it is picking up momentum," concluded
Gupta.

Citing the same, Shah opined, "Because of the slowdown, CIOs across India
were cutting down on expenses and were having a tight budget; however, now with
the slowdown fading out, most of the companies are opting for disaster
management solutions. I expect that within two years, disaster management
solutions will receive a major boost and will grow by about 40 percent on a YoY
basis."

However, the SMB space has a lot to do in this aspect. It is often accepted
that owing to the budget constraint, the SMBs in India are not opting for a full
fledged disaster management solution. However, Kapur has a different standpoint.
"The primary reason for the low acceptability of disaster management in the SMB
space is the lack of technical knowledge and constraints in the planning stage.
Often, the SMBs go for direct buying from the vendor in accordance with their
capacities but the vendor fails to guide the client with appropriate solutions.
What I feel is that vendors need to initiate an awareness campaign and evolve
tailored solutions needs for SMBs," elucidated Kapur.

Also, Jeevan opined that SMBs and many corporate giants have not opted for
data recovery solutions yet and it remains an unexplored area. But if proper
awareness is created in the market, it can prove to be a great opportunity. As
data continues to grow in the country there is definitely a huge potential for
the data recovery sector.

"We have customized a Small Business Continuous Data Protection offering to
safeguard the network's critical data against unintended threats for small and
medium businesses. Available

for various unpredicted circumstances, these disaster recovery mechanisms
empower businesses to run their operations efficiently and productively
regardless of uninformed threats or accidents," added Mukhija, highlighting the
importance of the SMB segment. However, lately even though SMBs have been
attracting attention from SPs in the disaster management module as well, the
situation is not that promising when compared with an actual full-scale disaster
management deployment. Third-party hosting continues to feature as the most
sought after option for data backup and recovery and Jagannath opined that the
trend will continue to be so in the near future backed up by virtualization and
cloud models. "I expect that in two years time, hosting services will have a
double digit growth but in terms of overall growth in the market in this domain,
about eight percent growth on a YoY basis is expected," Jagannath concluded.

Avishek Rakshit

avishekr@cybermedia.co.in