Data Protection

A Week at Insight in Macau, China

by Peter Eicher on February 22, 2012

I’ve been spending the week at the NetApp Insight event  in Macau, China, talking to a host of NetApp partners and sales engineers from all over the Asia-Pacific region about the NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup (NSB) solution.

While NSB was launched in 2010, Syncsort has only recently begun to deliver the solution in the region via our distribution partner, Distribution Central.  Based on the conversations I’ve been having, it’s not a moment too soon!

I spoke to dozens of folks yesterday, and over and over it’s the same theme. Users need better data protection solutions  and the partner community here is excited about how NSB can take NetApp’s world-class data protection features (Snapshots, FlexClone, SnapMirror) and extend them into non-NetApp storage environments.

At one point during last night’s cocktail reception, I spoke to four Australian NetApp sales engineers in a row and they all confirmed that they are currently working on opportunities to solve customer problems with NSB. They were all eager to learn more about the solution’s unique value proposition and how it works!

When I share information about how NSB has helped take an 18-hour backup window and reduce it to 45 minutes or less, people’s eyes really light up. The problem is real, and folks here are ready to take NSB out to their users in a big way.

Good thing too, because it was not easy to get here.  Just for fun, here’s the journey I took to get to the event:

* Two hour flight from New York to Detroit
* Four hour layover in Detroit
* 16 hour flight to Hong Kong (I watched three movies and we weren’t even close to arriving!)
* 30 minute cab ride from Hong Kong airport to the Macau ferry terminal
* One hour ferry ride, Hong Kong to Macau
* 20 minute shuttle bus from ferry terminal to hotel

On Friday, I get to do it all over again only this time in reverse. While the travel is not easy, the trip and the great conversations here at Insight have been well worth it!

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Are You “Syncsorting” Your Data?

by Peter Eicher on February 9, 2012

We recently held our annual sales kickoff and it was quite an event. Three days of meetings, trainings sessions, hundreds of conversations, and lots of fun mixed in.

A favorite moment for me was having one of our customers speak to the assembled group about their experience with NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup (NSB).

This particular customer (who I don’t have permission to identify publicly) is an organization of more than 20,000 employees spread across 1,500+ locations. The company’s IT environment is pushing 200 servers (physical and virtual), 50 terabytes of data and a Microsoft Exchange system of more than 10,000 mailboxes. Their backup environment was giving them a serious headache – long backup windows, slow restores, lots of tape to handle. Backup was also a full time job. They literally had a contractor on staff five days a week just to handle it! They were using a conventional backup product (you’d know the name if I said it).

Enter NSB.  Let’s get right to what changed.

  • Backup windows went from 18 hours to 30-45 minutes! Yes, you read that correctly. A 96% decrease in time!
  • Restore times changed from 2-4 hours to restore a system to being back on line in 5 to 10 minutes.
  • Messy tape shipments are gone, replaced by data replication (using SnapMirror). While the customer thankfully has not had to do a major restore, testing shows they could get all their tier 1 applications up and running in 1 to 2 hours should they lose their main data center.
  • They no longer have a full-time contractor to run backups. Instead, data protection takes about 30 minutes of attention every few days, a huge boon to a busy IT organization.

I’d call that a major success at modernizing a conventional backup architecture!

My favorite part of the story though is how this customer came up with a new word for recovery. When the IT team restores information using NSB, they say we’re “Syncsorting” the data!

You can be “Syncsorting” your data too, assuming you like the idea of a 96% reduction in backup time and recovery in ten minutes or less.  If you want to find out just how NSB can help you, please drop us a line.

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Data Protection Q&A with Evaluator Group’s Randy Kerns

by Peter Eicher on February 3, 2012

This week, the Syncsort team from around the world has gathered in Newport Beach, CA for our 2012 Global Sales Kickoff. It has been a great event to say the least with presentations from NSB customers, channel partners, NetApp executives, and our own solution experts. In conjunction with the event, we were also able to recognize great NSB partners like SwishData, Zumasys and Voyant Strategies as part of our Partner of the Year Awards program.

One of the presentations that delivered a lot of value to the Syncsort data protection team was from Evaluator Group’s Randy Kerns. Randy has had relationships with members of the Syncsort executive team for many years, and it was great to have him on hand to share his views on the data protection market and the benefits that NSB can deliver to customers. We had the chance to catch up with Randy following his presentation and wanted to share an excerpt from that. Enjoy!

Q. What demands do you see server virtualization placing on data protection today?

RK: Virtualization creates both a storage bottleneck and a great deal more systems to be backed up.  A new approach is needed.  New approaches may need a better backup software solution that can handle the virtualized environment.

Q. What do you hear from organizations in terms of the impact of Big Data on data protection?

RK: Right now, it is mostly a case of fear of dealing with the projected amount of machine to machine data they are going to have to deal with.  They are looking for approaches and tools to deal with this now.

Q. What are you observing from companies regarding business continuity and disaster recovery planning, as well as hearing about the priorities in those areas?

RK: Many companies have put BC/DR plans on hold the last few years and are now starting to catch up with what is needed.  BC/DR has many facets but the basis for all of it is data availability.  These companies are starting to execute on their delayed plans.

Q. Having spent time with the Syncsort team this week, are there any key takeaways on the NSB solution and its value to customers?

RK: I think one thing that struck me is the wealth of capabilities there are in the virtualization area.  There are some great opportunities there for improving the administration and operations.

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Congratulations to the Syncsort Partner of the Year Award Winners

by Josh Rogers on February 1, 2012

Today, we announced some very exciting news recognizing our partners for their commitment to Syncsort’s solutions. The program is a testament to the important role partners play in Syncsort’s go-to-market strategy. Across both our data integration and data protection businesses, we continue to expand our partner ecosystem and forge deep relationships as we navigate the increasingly diverse and competitive industry landscape.

The past year has brought a lot of attention to the industries we serve. The data integration business saw discussions around the opportunities Big Data represents for companies and how Hadoop and the evolution of ETL tools, or ETL 2.0 as we call it, make capitalizing on these opportunities a reality. In the data protection world, snapshot technology came to the forefront and organizations of all sizes faced increased pressure from the C-suite to modernize backup and implement more robust disaster recovery plans. This has certainly been a positive for solutions like NSB, our integrated data protection offering with our partners at NetApp.

Across the board, our partners demonstrated a tremendous commitment to serving customers and using Syncsort technology to create cost-effective solutions that address some of the most complex IT challenges that exist today. Our partners also showed great enthusiasm for the new Syncsort certification and training programs that we rolled out throughout the year. While we appreciate the many contributions made by all of our partners, the award winners really stood out across multiple dimensions. They include:

Data Integration

 Data Protection

We’ve had a tremendous response from all of the award winners and couldn’t be more enthusiastic about working closely with each of them in the year ahead.  We appreciate their hard work and it’s been fantastic for partners to make statements like:

“Our strategic relationship with Syncsort enables us both to offer clients unique solutions that address the most complex data integration challenges at a fraction of the time and cost. We appreciate the recognition as Syncsort’s GSI Partner of the Year, and look forward to building on our work and success together in the marketplace in the year ahead.” – Hal Lavender, Chief Architect and AVP, Cognizant

“Our partnership with Syncsort provides significant benefits to organizations, such as Singapore Exchange, looking for effective ways to reduce IT operating expenses and enhance flexibility through mainframe migration to better prepare for future growth. By collaborating with Syncsort and utilizing their powerful data integration and sorting technology, we can bring greater value to enterprises with large datasets and batch requirements.” – Cameron Jenkins, COO, Clerity

“Syncsort data protection solutions and their partnership have been a key piece of SwishData’s success since our founding in 2006.  As virtualization continues to disrupt various data center strategies, Syncsort products not only provide our customers and partners with an integrated, simple way to protect data, but also enable them to return to production operation time by recovering applications in minutes instead of the hours commonly required with other products. Fundamentally, SwishData adds value to our customers and Syncsort solutions enhance our ability to do just that.” - Bob Kerr, Vice President, SwishData Corporation

Congratulations again to this year’s winners!

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Data Protection Survey Series (Part 3): Recovery is at Risk

January 18, 2012

It’s been a while since Part 2 of our “Data Protection Survey Series.”  I’ve been very busy preparing for Syncsort’s sales kickoff coming up in a couple of weeks and also doing some early prep for NetApp Insight in Macau, China in February (hope to see lots of NetApp partners there!).  Kickoff should be a [...]

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Data Protection Predictions for 2012

January 3, 2012

It’s the time of year to make predictions (a bit late really) about the year ahead.  On the subject of prophecy, George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch  that “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.”   That’s not a sentiment I would argue with, so let’s just say I’m willing to make mistakes!    [...]

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Data Protection Survey Series (Part 2): Backup Takes Too Long

December 20, 2011

Now that we’ve explored the challenge of too many products in Part 1 of the series, it is time to turn our attention to a familiar topic. I’m sure you are all “shocked” by the title and wondering if this blog has turned into the “Captain Obvious” report. Indeed, we all know backup takes too [...]

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NSB Customer Dramatically Reduces Backup Time

December 15, 2011

I’m interrupting my current “Data Protection Survey Series” to share an article that Dave Raffo over at TechTarget’s SearchDataBackup site published this week. Dave recently spoke to NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup (NSB) customer Campbell Alliance and captured their experience using the solution in “Users Handle NetApp Backup in the Array.”  I don’t want to spoil [...]

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