The August 14 power outage was a stark reminder that natural (or deliberate) disasters are unpredictable and can cripple businesses beyond a single geography.
In this situation, the ability to restore archived data in a timely manner is crucial, and the amount of data replicated will incur various costs--especially for communications depending on distance and bandwidth.
Come September, storage giant EMC will introduce SRDF/A, the asynchronous version of its Symmetrix Remote Data Facility replication software--introduced in 1994 (after the World Trade Center bombing a year earlier).
EMC claims that SRDF/A, combined with native Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, offers huge savings for customers, especially those with offices spread across long distances.
"We can now offer large, distance data replication at 50 percent off telecommunications costs," said Clive Gold, EMC Australia marketing director.
Meta Group's Dr Kevin McIsaac agrees with Gold...but to a certain extent.
"The use of SRDF/A and native Gigabit interfaces will reduce the cost and complexity of remote replication," McIsaac, the research director for Asia-Pacific at Meta, told ZDNet Australia.
"However, due to the number of variables in the cost equation (communications, for example), organisations need to look at how much difference this makes in their specific setting," McIsaac said.
The analyst warned that the asynchronous nature of data recovery has to be fully understood before it's implemented.
"Storage and application administrators need to understand the implications of using asynchronous replication on the recovery.
"Some data will be lost and the recovery [process] can become even more complex," McIsaac said.
While SRDF/A is a natural extension to EMC's disaster recovery portfolio, it only runs on the company's Symmetrix DMX line of networked storage systems, unlike the competition.
Volume Replicator works on any storage platform but SRDF/A is proprietary, said Sal Fernando, chief technical architect at Veritas.
EMC has been assiduous in stamping its mark in the lucrative storage software space--the US$1.3 billion acquisition of backup and recovery software maker Legato is a clear indication of its intentions.
The Asia-Pacific disaster recovery and business continuity market is expected to exceed US$1 billion by 2006, increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent from US$551 million in 2001, according to market research firm IDC.
"Given where they want to go, EMC needs to continue to update its products and potentially make additional acquisitions," IDC analyst Rick Villars told CNET News.com. "They have many of the components in place, particularly in light of the Legato deal. The challenge will be trying to pull the pieces together."
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