Backup for the Branch Office

By Michelle Rafter

When it comes to IT support, an organization’s branch offices are often treated like distant relatives -- with less time, attention and money lavished on them. This is especially true of backups. Too often, CIOs and IT managers don’t know whether branch offices follow corporate backup protocols or if remote PCs are getting backed up at all, according to storage industry analysts.

But failing to include computers at branch offices or other remote locations in a backup strategy is risky. Without proper backups, organizations leave themselves vulnerable. A tornado or other natural disaster could wipe out a remote site. Or a branch office employee could lose their laptop or have it stolen. The result of such data disasters: lost productivity and revenue, and if data from a stolen laptop leaks to the public, damage to a company’s good name. And with more workers keeping important data on desktops and laptops, it’s critical to have a proper branch office backup plan, says Stephanie Balaouras, infrastructure analyst with Forrester Research, the technology market research firm. If companies aren’t protecting their PCs -- no matter where they’re located -- “It’s a huge gap in your strategy,” Balaouras says.

Backup Options Abound

For backing up branch offices, CIOs have two basic choices: centralize at one or more regional data centers, or keep backup-related servers and storage at the branch level. Each option has its pros and cons. Centralized backup costs less and takes the burden off remote IT staff, but uses more bandwidth. Without specialized equipment, sending data over WANs can take minutes instead of seconds, according to analysts’ reports. Local backups save on bandwidth, but leave management to a local IT staff that can be seriously short-handed and under-funded.

Whether a company centralizes or distributes branch-office backup functions, CIOs can opt to manage the work in-house, or use a hosted service or online backup vendor. Companies that keep things in-house can make the job easier by using newer electronic, disk-based backup technology with improved de-duplication in place of traditional tape-based backup systems. De-duplication or “de-dupe,” which eliminates storing duplicate data during backups, reduces storage and bandwidth requirements -- both pluses for backing up branch locations.

Large enterprises that previously shied away from de-dupe solutions from emerging vendors are taking some comfort in the fact that the technology is being built into client-side backup software, says Dave Russell, vice president of storage strategies and technologies at tech market research firm Gartner Inc.

Other companies are choosing to outsource to online backup vendors. Once perceived as too untested for major enterprises, online backup is gaining enterprise customers. It’s also earning legitimacy after a string of high-profile acquisitions of online backup startups by established storage vendors, including IBM, which bought Arsenal Digital Solutions in December, 2007; EMC, which acquired Berkeley Data Systems during fall 2007; and similar acquisitions by Seagate and Iron Mountain in 2006 and 2005, respectively. By its very nature, online backup is tailor made for large companies with many locations. GE, for example, is backing up 30,000 PCs across its entire organization using Berkeley Data Systems’ Mozy online backup and storage service, according to Forrester’s Balaouras.

Depending on a company’s size and needs, prices for complete backup solutions range from $20,000 to above six figures, Gartner’s Russell says. Because it’s expensive and companies typically have already invested heavily in existing infrastructure, CIOs are more likely to adopt new backup technologies over time rather than in one fell swoop, analysts say.

“Nirvana would be to have one solution worldwide for everything,” Russell says, “but most organizations realize that moving from a half-dozen solutions to one -- just for the sake of getting to one -- could have more risks than benefits. They need to understand what the costs and risks are and re-evaluate during purchasing cycles to see if they can make consolidations.”

Here’s what else analysts recommend CIOs do when building a branch-office backup plan:

• Give different employees different backup levels Branch executives and software programmers who work with critical data need a higher level of support, such as continuous data protection, which backs up data constantly or at scheduled intervals. Other workers can get by with more incremental backups, so set policies and systems accordingly, analysts say.

• Make backups easy and unobtrusive To make life easier for branch IT staffs and workers, schedule backups that run in the background or during off-peak hours. Use technology that can back up open files, so computers are covered even if they’re left on during overnight backups.

• Offer multiple restore levels Users and administrators should be able to restore individual PC files from backups, or when needed, a full, bare metal PC image restore, useful after a system crashes or in the event of a disaster.

As technologies evolve and the vendor marketplace matures and consolidates, it’s creating practical backup solutions for just about every company size and budget. This should help bring branch offices back into the enterprise family.

Michelle Rafter is a journalist based in Portland, Ore. She’s covered technology for Reuters, The Industry Standard and other magazines and newspapers for more than 20 years.