The Challenge of Data Protection Management

The complexity and volatility of distributed enterprise backup operations make it difficult for companies to understand their true backup success rate, and more importantly, the recoverability of their data. Heterogeneous backup systems provide virtually no meaningful visibility into system performance, and no support for meeting business objectives in data protection. As a result, companies are exposed to substantial business risk from lost data, leaving their IT departments scrambling to identify, troubleshoot and remedy sources of failure before the next backup window.

A reliable, comprehensive backup reporting platform that delivers an instant picture of backup success and failures, root causes, and performance against recoverability service level agreements (SLAs), system utilization and more is needed.

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Meeting SLAs and Compliance Requirements

Running IT departments as service businesses means delivering and demonstrating compliance with SLAs to internal customers. Further, new pressures from government regulatory mandates such as Sarbanes Oxley, SEC 17a, HIPAA, Basel II and others bring new demands for increased visibility into, and validation of, data protection efforts. If IT fails to meet and communicate SLA delivery requirements, it dramatically impacts their ability to stay aligned with business goals. And failure to comply with a growing roster of regulatory requirements exposes corporations to financial penalties, costly litigation, or both.

The solution builds key metrics that enable IT managers to visualize and communicate backup performance against SLAs. For compliance documentation, Bocada® Enterprise compiles a historical record of straightforward, auditable reports that can be retained for future reference.
Bocada Enterprise provides a means to:

  • Develop sound services practices and service level objectives
  • Demonstrate compliance with service level and regulatory goals
  • Validate activities and actual performance against SLAs
  • Maintain an auditable record of all backup activity and evaluate performance over time
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Proving Service Delivery

IT staff need to communicate their level of service and success to data owners, management, operations, and sometimes external auditors. Communication by itself is not the answer- what's needed is a way to ensure the delivery of the right information to the right party in the right context at the right time.

Whether it is sharing success and failure data with data owners, or using the chargeback utility to track, assign and report consumption costs to end user departments, Bocada Enterprise provides a powerful medium to visualize activity and share those results on a tailored basis with other teams.

As an information aggregation and distribution platform, the Bocada Enterprise backup reporting software automates data gathering, so that IT staff do not waste time gathering or formatting information to share with their constituents. Standardized and custom backup report templates allow IT managers to choose the form that best depicts the results they need to show.

Bocada Enterprise enables web browser access to reports. With a logon account, users can view and run reports on demand based on their individual needs. Or, reports can be automatically run, stored and e-mailed out by the system in accord with IT policy.

Bocada Enterprise communicates:

  • Clear visualization of backup performance, risk, and resource requirements
  • Performance of backup and specific and industry benchmark service level objectives
  • Consumption of data protection services by corresponding business units
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Reducing Risk

Bocada Enterprise helps IT management to rapidly reduce the number of failed backups and reduce the risk of lost data. Bocada Enterprise supports established service level agreements, including error classification and sensitivity, as well as asset prioritization and data backup and protection levels. The net result is a vast improvement in overall data recoverability and improved system efficiency.

Bocada Enterprise reduces exposure to lost data by:

  • Quickly pinpointing chronic sources of error and orphaned assets
  • Modifying operations and procedures that negatively impact data protection
  • Troubleshooting infrastructure component bugs
  • Building and maintaining a historical track record of backup performance against recoverability objectives
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Achieving Operational Excellence: Increased System Utilization, Staff Productivity, Lower Costs

IT staff are under pressure to reduce the cost per gigabyte of stored data, while still ensuring near 100% recoverability. To meet these goals, companies have three objectives they must achieve:

  • Ensure that their existing backup infrastructure is performing to spec--total system throughput, consumption of resources during the backup window, remedying bottlenecks.
  • Ensure full utilization of existing system assets--avoid overbuying capacity.
  • Improve the total volume and value of work done by operations

Bocada Enterprise gathers, organizes and presents key performance data that enables companies to meet these objectives. IT staff can quickly and easily understand true system performance and asset utilization including servers, network and media, as well as future resource requirements.

Bocada Enterprise leverages IT staff productivity by eliminating time wasted by combing cryptic log files for sources of error. Instead, Bocada Enterprise automates error identification and provides critical insight into sources of failure and performance problems, guiding staff on problem resolution versus simple problem identification.

Bocada Enterprise reduces the cost per gigabyte stored by:

  • Maximizing results accomplished with existing backup resources
  • Ensuring full utilization against current and future system resource requirements
  • Maximizing backup staff productivity
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