Steve Pearce Chief Operating Officer
Managed Services
Industry Hype or a real solution to key
business continuity issues ?
(Developing trend or latest fad ?)
Agenda
Corporate Data and the Business Continuity issues this presents
Managed Services – what,why,who?
VBAK managed back up service
Customer case study – Charles Russell
Summary
The Data Storage Management Issue
Corporate customers will continue to need more storage to service dramatic growth in demand .
For every server sold storage is likely to generate twice
the original investment over the subsequent three years.
There are real drivers behind this More data being generated than ever before. Rich media – Video, photo’s, graphics, music, voice. Greater circulation of data - Internet, shared databases.
Becoming more and more complex to manage and deploy SAN’s, NAS.
Loss of data - unacceptable business risk.
Customer Data Storage Challenges
Data management a key issue Deployment / Security Back up / Restore / Downtime Increasing legislation Explosion in Distributed computing / NT Real costs are in management
Growth unpredictable Difficult to plan and budget effectively Has impact on rest of IT operations
Skills shortage – a genuine problem
Duplicate data centre resilient links zero data loss remote clustered systems
Dual site dual phase commit workload shared by two sites. Large secondary estate required. Large bandwidth requirements
Data vaulting to active secondary site critical data. Some duplicate hardware and environment some real time bandwidth required
Data vaulting – moving subset of critical data offsite by network to dedicated storage facility
Offsite Vaulting (PTAM) with DR site
Offsite vaulting Pickup Truck Access Method (PTAM) relies on manual process to manage offsite data and also hardware can be made available in a disaster
Do nothing, no off-site data
BSI 7 Levels of Disaster RecoveryC
ost
Com
plex
ity
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Applica
tion &
data
ava
ilability
Busin
ess im
pact
Applica
tion &
data
reco
very
tim
e
Cost
Full replication
Back up & restore
Longer term archiving
Data Segmentation
Back up and Restore
Essential aspect of any business IT operation Chore not core
Exacerbated by proliferation of distributed and networked computing
Still extremely manual / process unchanged for 25 years Significant hidden cost and risk of data loss Data security questionable Potential Business continuity ‘weakest link’ Currently a partial solution- does not consider the entire data set.
Real need for a new solution to an old problem
Managed Service Provision Provide customers with ability to outsource or ‘out task’ non core IT activity –
Use technology to bridge skills gap.
Typically ‘Online’ - use telecoms to enable
centralised management and scalability. One to many economies of scale
& investment
Pay as you go / utility computing model. Rent not build .
ASP’s,SSP’s, XSP’s Applications Software & Storage Specialists Traditional Resellers New entrants ISP’s / telco’s
Remote Customers
WAN or Internet
Data Center
Service Provider
Customer Case Study - Charles Russell Solicitors
Charles Russell City of London law firm (est. 200 years) 500 staff / 76 partners 3 UK offices / IT team of 16 Professional services / High value business critical data
Challenges Need to ensure vital data properly backed up Demands on IT staff and systems ( time & expertise) Regular requests for restore Growth in data volumes Remote office backups (Cheltenham / Guilford) 300+GB of data to back up to tape each day Space in London office at a premium.
The Customer Requirements - IT Director Jon Gould
“I am looking for services that will make life simpler and will also enable us to get things done as fast and efficiently as possible.”
“Manual backup can be very haphazard. We don’t want to suffer the dreadful scenario that the backup has not worked, or it is has been forgotten that day.”
“It is a case of getting the job done and having the confidence of knowing it has been done.”
Efficiency
Risk Management
Confidence
The Options
• 1 – Do Nothing and make do with current processes
• 2 – In – house centralised tape system
• 3 – Build a data centre / data vaulting facility
• 4 – Managed Service, VBAK
- Step by step
Charles Russell solution
InTechnology Network
CharlesRussell Private VPN
London Data Centre
Critical servers inPrivate Racks
VBAK back up copy
Cheltenham Guildford
London
Harrogate Data Centre
Managed Services - Conclusion
Industry analysts forecast substantial increase in demand for Managed Storage services and have identified real drivers for this.
Big potential but must provide :- Real technical and commercial benefit to customers
- cheaper, better, easier
Requires real investment to deliver this :- Specialist skills & expertise Infrastructure – Datacentre / Network / Internet Support services / SLA’s
Still some resistance to the concept but resource constraints, new services and reducing teleco costs will drive the model.