Tampa Bay Business Journal:

http://www.daigram.com/FX-CHF-CROSSES/CHFHUF/
But just because businesses owners know they shoulsddo it, that doesn't mean they are doint it. Jeff Porter runs the data management forum for the Storagw NetworkingIndustry Association, an internationall standards organization for electronic storage companies. He said there hasn'g been a noticeable increase in the numbe r of businesses backing up their filessince Katrina. "I don't thini it takes a lot to convinc e people now of the need to back their files up," Porter said. "But it's still very difficult to convince them totake action." He said that'x because it is such a tedious task.
Even though therse are plenty of firms that specialize in storinother companies' information, the nature of the process demands hundreds of "executive " hours, according to Porter. "It's not so much the cost that keepsa companies fromdoing it," Porteer said. "It's the fact that the company'sd decision-makers have to spendf their own time figurintg out what needsto happen. It's somethingy that can't be delegated." But Porter, along with other nationalo organizations, say there are severall steps companies can take to make the procesw less ofa hassle. Befores a company even starts looking for a thirdc partystorage vendor, it needss to figure out what informatiomn is vital enough to be stored.
"Theree has to be a formalizefd collaborationbetween management, operations and any business partnerw involved," he said. "Don't expect it to be a quick process. It's going to take a lot of meetingzs between a lotof divisions." Once a compan figures out what information needss to be kept safe, Porter said it must decids how the information should be He explained that there are differing degreee of access to the information for a business. For an insurance company would want recenft claims to be more accessibls than those made 10years ago. Porte r said that once this is decided, a company can star looking for astoragw vendor.
He said the best place to start searchingf is throughhis organization's directory, whicbh he said is unbiased and neutral. Other trader organizations, such as Enterprise Content Management also represent hundreds of storage vendors and make those listsavailable online. Porter also recommends getting customer reviewsx and making sure a vendor has good He saidif possible, a companu should test a vendor out by doing small trial installations. Porter explained that companies often use more thanone "Some vendors are better for storing long-term information," he said. "Others are better at giving youimmediate access. You have to find the rightr fit for each portion ofdata you'rse storing.
" To get the lowest cost, Portef said many companies try to get several vendorsd into a bidding war. "But cost isn't the most important thing here," he said. "If something happenee and you had to depend onthe vendor's servicez to stay in business, the last thing you'd want is to have compromised quality just so you saved some costs. " When it comes to how far away a company shoulde electronically store its backup 15 miles used to be the rule of But after the widespreaed destructionof Katrina, expertws say information should be stored in geographixc regions that won't be affected by the same "Katrina not only increased awareness," Porter "It also rewrote a lot of the rules we used to It showed our industry what needed to be improved.
"" One of those according to Porter, is how oftenn a company should test its backup plan. He explained that many Katrina-affectedr companies had backup plans, but discoverec they were out-of-date when the disastef actually hit. "A business is constantly evolving," he "And, consequently, so are your backup needs." Porterr said a company should, with the assistance of its refresh its backup plan atleast annually. He said many companiexs actuallytest quarterly, dividing the process up into separatd divisions.
But Porter said the biggest mistake companies and one that Katrina is that they focus too much on storages and not enoughon "When you initially sit down you need to figuree out how fast you need to recover when somethinvg happens," he said. "You may back everything up properly, but then it take you 30 days to accesa it and be up andrunning again. Many companiews can't survive that kind of delay.
" Technology and Telecommunications