Securing live business information

Like other companies in the world today, should Middle East companies manage exploding information growth while keeping costs down and meeting stringent service levels? Abdulaziz Al-Salloum, Duroob Technology’s Managing Director, shares his views on these challenges.

In the past, a business continuity infrastructure has been looked at as an insurance policy that should be there in case of a disaster. Nowadays, more and more companies are trying to make business continuity infrastructure dynamic - using it everyday of the week to move information technology systems anytime, anywhere and for whatever purpose.

Organisations in Middle East find data volumes continuing to grow, service level and compliance requirements increasing and costs rising. Awareness is rising as Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity solutions can dramatically improve operations, making data easier to share and manage with less disruption.

Over the last several years, organisations have learned that this comprehensive solution not only simplifies complex environments, but also improves utilisation and boosts productivity - all resulting in lower total cost of ownership. Companies in the Middle East are now mature enough to understand that users require solutions that are easy to use and feature advanced capabilities that enable them to remain competitive in the marketplace while meeting IT infrastructure demands, reliability and performance.

As always, system reliability is critical for any organisation and the importance of continuous information access has never been greater. IT architectures that fail to deliver high availability will impede business operations. Disaster recovery and business continuity solution capabilities make it easier to meet required service levels while improving efficiency and it provides the ability to place information in storage tiers that can significantly reduce costs.

Easy-to-use tools that work across the information infrastructure help to utilise best practices for backup and recovery management and operations. Also another key in meeting service levels is intelligence in the environment, including the ability to prioritise workloads at different times during the day to meet application requirements.

In a long-term vision, organisations should have the ability to move data among various drive types and RAID levels, streamlining their environment whilst improve efficiency and flexibility. Disasters can be costly in terms of downtime and manpower, so if a company has business continuity solutions that can alleviate the unexpected costs then the investment would pay for itself.

There has never been a good time to put off implementing a business continuity or disaster recovery plan. However, in these difficult times it could be even more important to implement a solution and ensure that your business can continue in the face of a disaster. Dynamic infrastructure ties in all of the benefits of business continuity, without restoration times, without downtime and companies should protect themselves in the event of following:

• Exponential data growth, compliance requirements and service level agreements
• System or power outages, natural disaster, internal sabotage, government conflict or cyber attack.

The following aspects should be addressed before the evaluation of disaster recovery or business continuity solutions:

• Business agility, superior application uptime, simplicity of management, and breakthrough value for your enterprise
• Achieving performance objectives for all application tiers at the lowest TCO
• Providing the highest levels of system availability and data protection
• Enhancing backup and recovery processes while reducing associated costs
• Proactive service and support to quickly resolve potential issues, minimise both planned and unplanned outages
• Avoid penalties due to loss of information
• Advanced business continuity via array based replication technologies to protect and move critical information

The overall goal should be to minimise business disruptions and maintain a high level of confidence in the ability of your company to resume working in a timely manner.

Abdulaziz Al-Salloum owns and oversees Duroob Technology's business units and has 20 years of experience facilitating international business and developing strategies to promote new technology and solutions in Middle East markets. Prior to establishing Duroob Technology, he was the Managing Director of, and led the entire operations of, CA Middle East, headquartered in Saudi Arabia and with offices throughout the Gulf region.