Creating a Business Case: Translating Technical Capabilities into Business Advantage

Technical people and business people don’t always speak the same language. IT managers and administrators who understand the business goals and realities of their company are able to evaluate and select technology that will help meet goals while staying within budget. In best case scenarios, the technology they select actually saves the company money. The hard part is often explaining the benefits of chosen technology to business people who have to sign off on the investment.

This white paper outlines and illustrates how to create a business case for new technology. It uses the example of fictitious companies that is currently spending quite a bit of money on a tape-based data backup and restoration solution. While features and benefits are an important part of the case, the focus is on business advantage: cost savings through improved operations and fast return on investment.

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Deduplication: Effectively Reducing the Cost of Backup and Storage

Organizations have to backup and store data. Compliance requirements demand that data be stored for periods of time. Productivity demands that data is available in case of disaster or accidental loss of work. Unfortunately, meeting those demands is getting more and more expensive as the amount of data that has to be backed up and stored multiplies.

Reducing the cost of backup and storage starts with reducing the amount of data that is backed up and stored. Data deduplication ensures that the same, unchanged files are not repeatedly backed up during nightly processes. Reducing storage capacity alone is a strong argument for implementing data deduplication, but when integrated with server-based backup processes that also include data compression, the combined backup and storage savings are compelling.

Written by Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, this white paper from AppAssure Software will cover: Data deduplication, Data management, Storage management software, Capacity planning and more!

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Windows Server Disaster Recovery

Windows Server applications are often mission critical. The impact of natural, random and man-made disasters on these applications, especially email, and their subsequent disruption can cripple an organization. This white paper from AppAssure Software offers advice for protecting your existing Windows Server infrastructure from disruptive application outages.

True disasters are unseen and insufficiently forecast. To minimize the impact of disasters on Microsoft Windows Server applications, proper planning, testing, and investments are required. This eGuide from AppAssure Software provides information critical to any organization that seeks to avoid total disaster in the event of the unforeseen.

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SQL Server Database Backup and Restore Planning

Author: Bryan Oliver

Whether a business is small, medium or large business, it must have a well-written plan for backing up the servers. Planning a backup strategy up-front and documenting not only the backup process but also the restore process, will save you a ton of time in the end. Because of its value to the company and the sensitive nature of it, the classification of data must be carefully considered in the planning stage.

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Leveraging Virtualization for Application Assurance

Business continuity. Application assurance. Virtualization. Consider that a mission-critical progression. Business continuity is essential for business productivity. Bluntly put, if people can’t get their work done, it’s impossible to realize revenue. The applications that are most central to the productivity of every staff person in your organization are e-mail and SQL databases. They need reliable and consistent access to those applications in order to communicate with work peers, customers, and partners.

The problem is that application assurance, particularly the assurance of e-mail in Windows-based environments, is challenging. And it can be easy to become complacent when outages are sporadic at best. However, every outage presents such negative business impact that complacency is irresponsible. Virtualization answers the need for business continuity and challenge of application assurance enabling companies to quickly and seamlessly recover from e-mail outages and keep business on track.

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Backup Redesign: Do More with Less…Really!

Author: Joe Hand

Any company that relies on data intensive applications like e-mail, financial, human resource, customer management, and product development systems – and that’s every company – is experiencing data explosion. Mandated by legal compliance and required by management best practices, data protection measures including backup, storage, and retrieval, are more mission-critical than ever. On top of that, demands for high availability and fast disaster recovery are increasing. Unfortunately, enterprise-wide solutions that rely on tape backup are less efficient and more costly than ever. New disk-based backup solutions that focus on application – not just data – protection are redefining the state-of-the-art by realizing significant time and money savings through data expansion moderation, fast backup, easy data retrieval, high availability assurance, and reliable disaster recovery.

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Configuring Microsoft Exchange for Fast Recovery

Author: Ron Barrett

Microsoft Exchange is the premiere authority for email in today’s global marketplace. With the impact email has on the workplace and corporate communications, along with the advent of Exchange Server 2007, maintaining an optimal environment is vital. This includes building a resilient environment that can recover from unexpected interruptions.

The Essentials Series: Configuring Microsoft Exchange for Fast Recovery will provide you with the tools for configuring hardware backup and restoration strategies to help return Exchange to full function with minimal downtime.

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Disaster Recovery, Hoping for the Best, Planning for the Worst

Author: Paul Robichaux, Brien M. Posey for TechTarget

Email has evolved from a convenience to a business necessity. The impact of natural, random, and man-made disasters on email, and the subsequent disruption in mail-flow can cripple an organization’s ability to deliver messages. This E-Guide from SearchExchange.com and AppAssure Software offers best practices and advice for protecting your existing infrastructure from disruptive email outages.

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3 Best Practices for Reducing Exchange Downtime

Author: Mark Arnold & AppAssure Software

Messaging has rapidly become the one, true business critical application in use today by many, probably most, enterprises. Even more so than Enterprise Resource Planning or other cross-business applications, any failure in the messaging system is noticed by, and affects everyone. Learn how to proactively approach disaster recovery for Microsoft Exchange.

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11 Myths About Microsoft Exchange Disaster Recovery

Author: AppAssure Software

For as long as Microsoft Exchange Server has existed, so too, has the market seen its share of products for backup and recovery. Over the years there have been a number of products that have failed to come through when needed most – during an Exchange failure. Making proper backups is part of the process, ensuring that when you have an outage, it will be the shortest possible. But, with the large variety of products available for all types of businesses, it is no surprise that there are several misconceptions about backup and recovery software. Learn how to improve your backup process, reducing outage windows.

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Assuring Successful Exchange Recoveries

Author: Mark Arnold, Exchange MVP

Microsoft Exchange is a mission-critical business application. When the e-mail stops flowing to users, productivity grinds to a halt. Mark Arnold discusses how to develop a consistent method for validating the recoverability of Exchange and incorporating it into everyday operations to prepare for disasters.

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