Need of Enterprise Data Backup and Archive Systems for Indian Businesses
India is considered as one of the fastest growing economies in terms of technology and information technology driven companies. Over the past decade automation of almost all industries has been carried out in increasing pace. More over expansion of businesses via establishing branches and development centers demanded better connection, data storing, integration and management. Enterprise data security became an important factor and the need of business continuity given necessitated data backup and archiving systems.
Still enterprise data backup and archive is in its early stages in India. Most of the small and medium businesses (SMBs) use low-cost and short-lasting data management systems. This poor data management caused some serious adversities in data flow and business administration. Fore example, a recent study by Symantec shows that 35% of Indian SMBs have gone out of business due to data loss. These things indicate the need of better enterprise data backup and archiving plans and systems for Indian businesses.
Most of the Indian entrepreneurs do not differentiate between backup and archiving. Actually they both are different procedures with different goals. Data backup is the process of storing the exact mirror data else where. This mirror copy which is the exact replica of the database at the time of backup is used to recreate the database. Generally backup is a fast process and most backup policy demand taking one or more backup daily. The data is stored in some low-cost, remote or movable storing device like hard-disk, CD/DVD drives or flash drives. But more advanced companies and large enterprises need sophisticated systems which backup the data in (near) real-time or can store data on remote systems. Automated backup systems are now available, which is a convenient option for most businesses, as they eliminate the ‘human mistake factor’ from the backup process.
Data archive is the process of filtering of data and storing of data which should be needed in future. The process involves screening, funneling, filtering, naming, classification and arrangement of data. Things like duplication, unwanted info and things which are needed for very short time frame are omitted out. The idea is to use the lowest possible storage space for maximum output. Archiving is generally a time consuming process, carried out less often and the low-cost storing devices are not used. Enterprise data archiving systems comes with powerful archiving software systems, good data encryption and dedicated storing arrays. The archiving system ensures data integrity and availability for months or years and ensures retrieval of data whenever needed. Data archiving also help backup process as it reduces the need of storing space for data backup; as you can imagine the database can grow very fast when there is no filtering done periodically.
When choosing both data backup and archive systems, entrepreneurs should think about the future. For example choosing a storing device with low space, when your data size can exceed that in weeks or months is always going to be a bad investment.