If you are familiar with how David Letterman reads his Top 10 lists, the most important items are #1, 2 and 3 and are read at the end.  In Lyon’s article, his top three DBMS Requirements are…coming in at #3 – Application Data Availability, at #2 – Application-Level Data Recovery and coming in at #1 this week is System-Level Data Recovery. 

His summary says it all regarding the way the items are ordered:

“One argument I often hear about #1 and #2 (recovery) goes like this:  ‘Our most important requirement is Performance! If our applications run slowly, we will lose customers!’

Perhaps; but, consider: what would you prefer?  A system where 5 percent of transactions run extremely slowly?  Or one where 5 percent of the data was invalid, inconsistent or unrecoverable?”

Check out the article for the complete Top 10 list and let us know if you disagree with the list.  Are there any items missing or do you believe they are in the wrong order of priority?  We’d love to hear from you.

Gartner predicts that “by 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.”

Can you imagine not having any IT assets to pay for or manage and your data would be available whenever you need it?  You will be able to focus your efforts on more strategic initiatives and will be saving money while doing it.

Providing our data recovery solutions in the cloud, we believe that cloud computing is here to stay and small and mid-sized businesses should seriously consider moving to the cloud to take advantage of its many benefits.  Are you living in the cloud or do you plan to move there?

“April saw the largest net monthly job gain in IT-related jobs recorded since the Wall Street financial crisis was realized in 2008, according to Foote Partners, a firm that analyzes IT labor statistics.

A net gain of 8,800 IT jobs represented a 15,600 job swing following a brief March 2010 setback in which a net 6,800 jobs were lost overall in five bellwether IT job segments monitored by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.

To read more of this article, click here.  Or visit Foote Partners website for more statistics on the IT-job market.  Is your company hiring?  Are you seeing more IT jobs being posted?  Share your thoughts on where you think the IT-job market is headed by commenting on this blog.

I recommend saving IBM’s “news” page on their website as one of your “favorites”.  It is a great source for the latest and greatest news on IBM and its products.  Just in July so far, IBM has made 20 announcements ranging from acquisitions and industry reports to new products and collaborations. 

Additionally, I recommend saving “IT Jungle” as a “favorite” website.  This website is dedicated to helping business users “figure out how to survive, adapt and thrive in the complex IT ecosystem”.  They focus heavily on the IBM iSeries market.

Do you have resources you would recommend to the other readers of this blog?  If so, please comment below.

We will continue to offer the same data protection and recovery solutions (SafeData/HA, SafeData/DR and SafeData/TR) and will be able to expand our offerings for our clients with the solutions provided by DSC. 

This acquisition will also enable us to extend our reach across the country to other organizations that need data recovery solutions.  DSC is well-respected in the industry and we look forward to this new phase for SafeData.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below or contact us directly.

This guide will provide you with the insight you need to determine which solution will best protect your business from downtime and lost revenue.

Throughout the guide, you’ll discover answers to questions that should be considered when comparing recovery solutions. For instance…

• Which solution is the lowest cost and which is the largest investment?

• Which solution requires IT staff travel to backup facilities?

• Which solution has the greatest human error potential?

• Which solution provides recovery in minutes vs. hours?

• Which solution protects data and applications?

• Which solution requires investment in additional hardware or software?

To download this guide, click here.

• “The Cathedral and The Bazaar” by Eric S. Raymond
• “The Cuckoo’s Egg” by Clifford Stoll
• “Sex.com” by Keiren McCarthy
• “Showstopper” by G. Pascal Zachary
• “Colossus: Bletchley Park’s Greatest Secret” by Paul Gannon
• “Insanely Great” by Steven Levy
• “Accidental Empires” by Robert X. Cringely
• “Microserfs” by Douglas Coupland
• “The New New Thing” by Michael Lewis
• “Startup” by Jerry Kaplan

If you have read any of these books, we’d love to hear what you thought.  Please share by commenting below.

Just imagine if your customer support department is unable to receive calls or if individuals can’t get through to your sales team to purchase products.  These situations can be detrimental to your reputation as well as your bottom line. 

It is important when you are developing or updating your business continuity plan to remember to make sure that you also plan for potential telecom system failures. 

SafeData/TR (telecom recovery) provides the needed protection to enable companies to rapidly regain control of incoming calls after an outage.  To learn more about this affordable, easy-to-use tool, contact SafeData.  Make sure you don’t miss those important calls.

In a May 20 press release, President Obama calls “upon Americans, especially those in hurricane prone areas, to learn more about protecting themselves against hurricanes and to work together to respond to them.”

For businesses, data and computer systems are essential to the continuity of their operations.  If their systems go down and their data is lost, they will most likely lose customers, see a decrease in revenue and in some instances actually go out of business.  Don’t let this happen to you.

Is data backup and recovery part of your business continuity plan?  Check out the SafeData website for information on our high availability, data recovery and telecom recovery solutions and determine which one best fits your organization’s data protection needs.  Don’t get caught without a data recovery plan, contact us today for a free assessment.

According to a blog post by Rita-Lyn Sanders, senior industry editor for System iNEWS, “April saw the largest net monthly job gain in IT-related jobs recorded since the Wall St. financial crisis was realized in 2008.”  In the blog, she interviewed an expert on the IT labor market, David Foote, CEO and Chief Research Officer of Foote Partners.  He believes that the recession is a good thing for the IT industry and for “those who have been able to demonstrate to their organizations that IT can save them money and make a business run more efficiently”.

Is your organization hiring IT staff?  Interestingly enough, many companies these days are turning to outsourcing to handle areas of their businesses where they have had to downsize staff.  IT outsourcing has become a very common practice.  Part of our success at SafeData has been a direct result of organizations needing a reliable provider to handle their data backup and recovery and turning to the managed services model.