Recovery Management: Change Is in the Air

Backup/restore software continues to be a key foundation for protecting data for business continuity purposes. However, it is widely accepted that companies are best served by focusing on overall recovery management, which encompasses high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) in addition to preserving their data. And although backup/restore is a key component for the centralized administration of recovery management, backup/restore has to work with other software capabilities to ensure quick recovery for high availability-focused solutions, such as continuous data protection (CDP) and disaster-recovery strategies, such as replicating data from a local to a remote site.

CA (formerly Computer Associates) is a leading supplier of recovery management software tools -- including CA ARCserve Backup, CA XOsoft High Availability, and CA XOsoft Replication. So it should come as no surprise that CA recently sponsored a research study of trends in recovery management. TheInfoPro, a well-known supplier of market intelligence for the IT industry, conducted the custom study to examine and clarify current trends in the recovery management market, as well as address specific issues related to market drivers for recovery management solutions. Web-based multiple-choice questionnaires were administered to 205 survey participants in four geographic markets: United States/North America, Europe, Japan and Brazil.

The most startling response was to the following question: "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? 'You would consider switching your backup solution to one that integrates with your replication solution.'" Approximately, 70 percent of the respondents either agreed (well over 50 percent) or strongly agreed with the statement. This response is especially notable considering another question: "How confident are you that you can recover your data using your existing backup product to meet your business needs?" A little less than 80 percent said they were confident (nearly 60 percent) or very confident, with only a very few percent not confident.

In other words, while a large majority of participants expressed confidence in their existing backup products, a number nearly as large would consider switching to an integrated solution. Continuing in that same vein, another study question asked if respondents would agree or disagree with the following statement: "You would consider using your replication vendors' backup software instead of your current installed backup software vendor." About 63 percent either agreed (about 51 percent) or strongly agreed.

Since the overall willingness of so many study participants to change was a bit surprising, the question is what would motivate them? When asked what threshold of backup integration pain would convince them to switch backup software vendors, respondents answered: integrated continuous data protection with backup and integrated replication with backup.Does such an enthusiastic willingness to embrace change make good business or IT sense? Change is an "in" word this year (as well as last), and one of the models of change we might consider in light of the CA study is the Lewin/Schein change theory, also known as the unfreezing-change-refreeze model. Unfreezing is the process of becoming motivated to change, such as present conditions leading to dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction could be over the elements that are important to the business (one of the questions), such as better control over the backup process, ability to scale disaster recovery solutions as the business grows, and implementing a reliable disaster recovery plan.

The next step in this model is change. What requires change needs to be carefully identified, and the view of the new state of affairs needs to specify the gap between the present state and the desired state. Among the important vendor requirements identified in the CA study were: avoid costly downtime if critical servers go down, simplify software management, support backups of virtual machines and protect remote office/branch office data. The final stage in the model is refreezing or making the change permanent. That is the conclusion all vendors hope to achieve with customers finally and permanently adopting their products.

Recovery management offers much more than just the typical backup and restore processes, although backup and restore is the first thing most organizations think of when they consider recovery management. Though conventional wisdom holds that organizations treat change in their backup/recovery environments very carefully, CA's study suggests that a large majority of organizations would be willing to consider abandoning their current backup/recovery software supplier for a more integrated recovery management solution.

That would seem to indicate a massive vote of confidence for integrated recovery management solutions, or perhaps significant dissatisfaction with current solutions. But we will not hold our breaths waiting for the market to shift wholeheartedly in that direction. Whether organizations would really be willing to change is obviously subject to the economic climate ("You want to charge me how much?") But, if a good economic case can be put forward for an integrated recovery management solution, it appears as if the vendor proposing the solution will at least get a fair hearing.

David Hill is principal of Mesabi Group LLC, which focuses on helping organizations make their complex storage, storage management, and interrelated IT infrastructure decisions easier by making the choices simpler and clearer to understand.InformationWeek Analytics has published an independent analysis of the challenges around enterprise storage. Download the report here (registration required).