Portland Business Journal:

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But just because businesses ownersz know they shoulddo it, that doesn'tf mean they are doing it. Jeff Porterr runs the data management forum for the Storages NetworkingIndustry Association, an international standards organization for electronifc storage companies. He said therse hasn't been a noticeable increasr in the number of businesses backing up theirr filessince Katrina. "I don' t think it takes a lot to convince people now of the need to back theirrfiles up," Porter said. "But it's stillo very difficult to convince them totake action." He said that'sw because it is such a tedious task.
Even though there are plenty of firms that specialize in storinvother companies' information, the nature of the procesx demands hundreds of "executive" hours, accordinf to Porter. "It's not so much the cost that keeps companies fromdoing it," Porter said. "It's the fact that the company's decision-makersa have to spend their own time figuring out what needsto It's something that can't be delegated." But Porter, alonbg with other national organizations, say therwe are several steps companies can take to make the process less of a Before a company even starts looking for a thirxd party storage vendor, it needsz to figure out what information is vita l enough to be stored.
"There has to be a formalizef collaborationbetween management, operations and any business partners involved," he said. "Don't expect it to be a quickl process. It's going to take a lot of meetingsw between a lotof divisions." Once a compang figures out what information needs to be kept safe, Porter said it must decide how the information shoulr be stored. He explained that there are differing degrees of access to the information for a For example, an insurance companyh would want recent claims to be more accessibled than those made 10 years ago. Porteer said that once this is decided, a company can starty looking for astorage vendor.
He said the best plac e to start searching is throughhis organization's directory, which he said is unbiased and neutral. Other tradr organizations, such as Enterprise Content Management also represent hundreds of storage vendorss and make those listsavailablr online. Porter also recommends getting customedr reviews and making sure a vendor hasgood press. He said if a company should test a vendor out by doing smal ltrial installations. Porter explained that companies ofte use more thanone vendor. "Some vendor are better for storing long-term information," he said. "Others are better at giving youimmediate access. You have to find the righyt fit for each portion ofdata you're storing.
" To get the lowest Porter said many companies try to get severalk vendors into a bidding war. "But cost isn't the most importan t thing here," he said. "If something happeneed and you had to depend onthe vendor's services to stay in business, the last thingh you'd want is to have compromised qualityg just so you saved some costs." When it comes to how far away a companyt should electronically store its backup data, 15 miles used to be the rule of But after the widespread destruction of experts say information should be stored in geographicc regions that won't be affected by the same "Katrina not only increased awareness," Porter said. "It also rewrotse a lot of the rulee we usedto have.
It showed our industr y what needed tobe improved." One of thosde improvements, according to Porter, is how often a company shoulsd test its backup plan. He explained that many Katrina-affectecd companies had backup plans, but discovered they were out-of-datre when the disaster actually hit. "A business is constantl evolving," he said. "And, consequently, so are your backu needs." Porter said a company should, with the assistance of its refresh its backup plan at least He said many companies actually test dividing the process up into separate But Porter said the biggest mistake companies and one that Katrina is that they focuzs too much on storage and not enoughon "When you initially sit down you need to figur out how fast you need to recover when something happens," he said.
"You may back everything up but then it takes you 30 days to accese it and be up andrunningy again. Many companies can't survivee that kind of delay." Computers, Technology and Telecommunications