for replication is about making judgements about every aspect of data at every aspect of the production process.
These judgements themselves are a useful audit of how the business actually functions.
By being forced to carry out a data replication process, a business can be forced to make an assessment of the very
fundamentals of its commercial practise. An audit of data becomes an audit of the business and a health check on
its functions.
In industries where downtime and lost data costs millions of pounds, the regulators have caught up and created
rigid standards of compliance that must be adhered to. In 2006, a global investment bank was fined 15 million by
regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission after it failed to retain tens of thousands of emails sought in
cases against the brokerage firm. Saving 15 million would be a reasonable return on replication investment.
To make the case for Replication as a Service even more persuasive, the process has been refined to keep costs
down. Not every item of data has to be replicated entirely. Much of the data in any system is not indispensable.
Some data contains duplicate records, some contains outdated records. The process of replication updates all of an
organisation s required data. Data that has already been replicated is not over-written, but of course remains ready
for retrieval.
Until recently, enterprise-standard replication has not been affordable to the majority of businesses. With the
invention of SunGard s Replication as a Service, this function could be within their budget. But CIOs will always
be pressed to prove that there is a business case for replication. Here is a simple example of the business case for a
medium sized enterprise.
A company with 250 employees with a storage area network (SAN) in place and a tape back up routine may
assume this is sufficient protection. But there are fundamental flaws in this plan.
The first business cost is the risk. With all data on site the business is prey to fire, floods and other disasters or
simple denial of access or hardware failure.
Another cost is the inevitable mixture of incompatible and uncommunicative storage devices, from competing
vendors, that will hold the data. As described above, any short term savings achieved by shopping around are
neutralised several times over by the management headache created by a clash of proprietary systems. Each
vendor s replication system recognises only its own kit. So the cost of the overall process of management is
multiplied, based on purchase of multiple systems, that are rarely at maximum use, and a labour intensive process.
As if that were not enough, there will be a third management cost, albeit one that frequently doesn t appear on
spreadsheets. The man hours spent on tape back ups are phenomenal. Tape has another cost, in that this outdated
technology is the basis for a lengthy restoration process. Given the pace of business these days, few companies can
survive two days of downtime while the systems are restored from a tape back up. That s assuming that a system
can actually be resurrected using this method. It s rarely tested, as it takes too long. A system crash is not the best
time to discover that tape restorations don t actually work because the tape has degraded.
In the event that a disaster happened between backup cycles it is inevitable important data will be lost. According
to analysts at IDC, the majority of SMEs never recover from a 24 hour period of downtime and go out of business
within a year. SunGard s Replication as a Service means, that whatever size your company, it can come back to life
in seconds.
The SunGard Replication as a Service not only delivers a return on your investment. It s about getting the return of
your business.
IDG 2010. IDG Communications Ltd, 101 Euston Road, London NW1 2RA
About SunGard Availability Services
SunGard Availability Services mission is to help customers prepare
for and recover from emergencies by helping them minimalise their
computer downtime and optimise their uptime, despite situations that
threaten to interrupt their business.
More than 10,000 customers worldwide rely on SunGard Availability Services to achieve uninterrupted
access to the information systems they need to do business. Trust us to do the same for you.
Tel: 0800 143 413
Email: infoavail@sungard.com
Web: www.sungard.co.uk
