New light on distributed data protection

The steady growth in storage-related IT spending says it all: companies are capturing, transacting, analysing and archiving data at unheard of levels.

The problem is, IT departments have to keep pace with this trend and store, archive and secure data on an enterprise-wide scale. In terms of centrally stored data, most are succeeding. However, the potential disasters are to be found on the client side.

Unlike central enterprise systems - such as CRM and ERP software - client-side data is often unstructured and unmanaged.

Moreover - according to research groups - more than 60% of client-side data is not adequately backed up at all as it resides on PCs.

Data types range from spreadsheets and word processing documents to e-mails. Large capacity files such as digital media and graphic-rich presentations compound the challenge.

Budget has been a stumbling block. Many organisations simply lack the resources to implement a universal client backup policy.

But, at odds with the cost-cutting efforts of most companies, is legislation.

In the US - in the wake of the Enron and MCI WorldCom corporate accounting scandals - has come the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, crafted to prevent high-profile corporate malfeasance.

In SA we have the second King Committee Report (King II) and the JSE Securities Exchange Listing Requirements Guidelines, which propose that company directors, collectively and individually, accept full responsibility for the accuracy of corporate information and reporting.

These requirements are already driving IT investment into financial management and business intelligence solutions that can help companies better understand their operations. Document management systems and enterprise-wide data protection systems are being updated or deployed as well.

Until recently, backing up client data has been both complex and unsatisfactory. Desktop PCs on the internal corporate network typically enjoy fast network connections (on the order of 100MBps) but the aggregate data load from thousands of client PCs can be extreme.

Clearly, simply scheduling client-to-server data updates is not the solution. Such a "brute force" approach would swamp the network with data traffic and force IT managers to significantly increase higher-cost central storage capacity.

More pressing is the situation with mobile PCs. Even best-case broadband links operate at data rates below 1Mbps, making them unsuitable for multi-megabyte transfers. The growing ranks of mobile PCs pose a threat to any effective, client-side backup routine.

So, ironically, those mobile PC users whose data is most at risk of loss are the ones least likely to backup.

One of the trends in evidence in the US is the implementation of intelligent, scalable and automated PC backup, archiving and consolidation solutions.

These are aimed at relieving IT managers - and corporate executives - of the problems associated with the vulnerability of exposed and distributed client side data.

These solutions take the form of software that allow backups to be performed to cost-effective central data storage repositories through "intelligent agents" installed on each client PC.

These agents automate and secure backups using a variety of appropriate transmission media. Significantly, they are often claimed to consume a fraction of the bandwidth and storage capacity of in-house solutions.

Enterprise-class PC backups are growing in popularity because more cost-effective investment in storage infrastructure is required. As intelligence is applied at the client (taking advantage of hyper-threading technology found in today`s processors), data can be analysed and compressed before it leaves the client disk, reducing network data traffic.

In a typical scenario, "smart" agent software on the client analyses and compares disk contents with data already backed up on the central servers. This process performs low-level comparisons of data at the client and on the server, and uploads only those individual blocks that have changed in each file since the last backup.

In addition, files common to multiple users can be stored as a single instance on the server. This prevents PCs from transferring the same file many times and storing the same files it in multiple user archives on the server. This approach drastically reduces storage costs and capacity requirements.

Today, thanks to ongoing advances in technology from ISVs such as Connected Corporation - rated as the world leader in PC backups by many analysts - capabilities such as disk scanning, content analysis, encryption and compression have been made available to assist users to improve data protection - and help meet corporate governance requirements.

Channel Data is the master distributor and marketer of Connected DataProtector, the world leader in laptop/desktop backups and Connected ArchiveStore/EM for e-mail-compliance archiving.