The adage “Not all men are created equal”, is also applicable to computer data. Data generated in any organization has different levels of criticality. Data can be classified as “absolutely essential”, “not essential right now, but may be required”, and “not essential any more”. Data which is most critical at a certain point in time, may become less critical at a later time. It is well-known that about 1/3rd of the data in a company network is active data, while rest is inactive or static and rarely accessed. Such data, while no more relevant to day-to-day business processes, still have to be retained for purposes of analysis and comparative studies of business performance. Data retention is also required due to legal and statutory obligations.
Inactive data takes up storage space, and primary disk-based storage space has its cost. Logic dictates that that it should be stored on less expensive storage media, while losing none of its security, and should be accessible in a reasonable amount of time when required. It also needs appreciable effort and time for regular monitoring and tracking, so that data beyond the stipulated retention period can be discarded. Data retention period varies on the nature of data. Data pertaining to research, engineering design, statistics, etc., usually have a longer retention span, while financial data retention is mostly governed by business and statutory policies. Offsite archiving of inactive or “cold” data is a cost effective way to ensure that record retention policies are properly complied with, while freeing time and space for core business activities of the company.
The traditional way to store data offsite is to make copies of the data onto tape and then physically move the tapes offsite. Another media used are hard disks. Both these media are well-known for their unreliability and failure rate. The need for quick and easy access to large volume of archive data has given rise to other storage solutions.
Usual offsite data archiving services offers collection of data for storage, proper tagging, retrieval and delivery of required data when asked for by the client and destroying such data which are past their retention period.
Online backup is a very effective solution as offsite data archiving. It allows for inactive data to be stored in multiple secure locations. As the system is automated, data is guaranteed to be offsite and secured. Also it is not limited by the physical or logical size of tapes or external hard drives. Lately, providers of Storage-as-a-Service (StaaS) for archiving, offer cloud-based archiving service aimed to reduce storage cost of static data.

The traditional way to store data offsite is to make copies of the data onto tape and then physically move the tapes offsite. Another media used are hard disks. Both these media are well-known for their unreliability and failure rate. The need for quick and easy access to large volume of archive data has given rise to other storage solutions.
Usual offsite data backup services offers collection of data on tape for storage, proper tagging, retrieval and delivery of required data when asked for by the client.
Online backup is a much more effective solution than offsite data backup. It has several plus factors which score over offsite backup.
Cost factor – Declining storage and Internet costs has made online backup more cost effective compared to tape, especially when cost of hardware, maintenance, IT personnel, tape collection, and offsite storage are taken into account.
Security factor – Online data backup has none of the physical security risks associated with tapes. Data can be automatically transported over a secure, encrypted channel to a secure data center, without any human intervention.
Reliability factor – It is widely agreed that a fair percentage of tape backups fail, owing to media corruption and improper storage. Online data backup, on the other hand, offer the higher reliability of RAID configured hard drives and redundancy of backed up data.
Recovery time factor – This is a critical parameter in the deployment of any disaster recovery plan. Online data backup has none of the delay associated with retrieval and loading of backup tapes, human errors and omissions and can provide an almost instant data recovery.
User-friendliness factor – Online data backup eliminates the troubles involved with tape backup, as backups are automated without the need for any human interaction. The process has a simple, easy-to-understand user interface.
Capacity and Storage factor – Online backup is not limited by the physical or logical size of tapes or external hard drives. With daily backups, continuous data archiving and ready access of data, online data backup is overwhelmingly superior to tape backup.
Upload speed – Low-end online backup service providers may have upload speeds from 300 to 750 Kbps, thus limiting the amount of data backup.
High-end online data backup services offer 5 and 10 Mbps upload speeds which allow transfers of up to 100 GB per day.
Online data backup offers an easy, reliable, secure and cost effective alternative to offsite data backup.

The World Wide Web has become a mine of information and knowledge for everyone. It is a mine that is never going to be exhausted, is always up-to-date with the latest information, caters to everybody’s needs and is available with the click of the mouse. Internet users range from students and professionals to researchers and scientists.
What are the types of data that are downloaded from an internet site? It may be pictures, songs, movies for an ordinary user or articles, How-Tos, analytical data for professionals. Now, downloading data through internet has several factors to contend with, such as download cost and download time. Both are directly proportional to the download volume. For not-so-easily-available information, one may have to surf through many web sites, till one stumbles upon it. Internet data is dynamic, meaning the same data may not be there to be accessed the next time one visits that site. Some information is widely and easily available, while some are hard to find.
One would surely not like to lose the data after downloading from the internet. Criticality of downloads depend on the type of job one is working at, losing which may mean one’s yearlong efforts going down the drain. Unfortunately, most internet users do not give a serious thought to the necessity of data backup. Apart from the cost and hassle of searching the data and downloading it again, a greater disaster may occur if one loses the work achieved with the help of the original downloads. Loss of data of a time-bound assignment may also hurt one’s professional image and integrity.
Another data to be protected is the E-mail data. If one regularly corresponds with one’s peers and co-workers, the E-mails will contain important information and interaction that needs to be preserved. One should not rely only on the inbox of one’s E-mail provider, as there may be occasions when one is unable to access their E-mail for some reason. All this leads to the conclusion that one should opt for a backup system. Online data backup offers an easy, reliable, secure and cost effective service to protect one’s data. Advantages of the online backup service are, it eliminates backup hardware and backup media cost like tape drives and tapes. Some online backup service providers offer ability to back up multiple platforms such as Windows, Unix and Mac, and database backup. Online backup provides full data protection, quick and total data recovery and lower costs.

A major concern in today’s business environment is the problem of rising cost. You in the IT department must also find ways to deal with it. You should find means to save on periodic replacement and upgradation of your hardware and restrict regularly incurred consumables cost. One area that needs attention is the backup process followed by you. Are you sure that you have the best hardware and software to provide a quick, reliable backup which is also cost-effective?
You may be, in all probability using tape drives and magnetic tape media or inexpensive USB hard drives, along with some popular well-known software applications that are fairly reliable. But these backup systems, both the hardware and the software, are extremely unreliable. A tape hardware- and software-based backup system needs almost constant monitoring and tuning to keep it running well. The amount of manual intervention required from tuning the backup jobs to manually rotating and tracking the tapes or hard drives increases the chances of error and omission. Even then, the fact you get a successful backup does not necessarily mean you will be able to restore the backed up data, as a tape drive may fail to read a tape after a successful backup. There is also the question of properly preserving the tapes, which requires a cool and clean environment. Backups stored on an external drive do not provide protection from theft or fire can crash or become corrupt due to power outages or administrative errors and can even be misplaced. If you are storing your backup media at the same site that hosts your department, you are inviting a disaster, if a natural calamity like earthquake, arson, flood or cyclone occurs. The inability to recover critical information necessary to run the business can spell doom for a company. So, performing data backup in ways that are not totally secure and reliable does not make it really cost-effective.
The best option in today’s competitive and challenging business environment, is to opt for online backup. Partnering with a reliable online backup provider brings cost-effective benefits, such as, no additional backup hardware and software to be purchased and maintained, no routine purchase of backup media, no software maintenance in the form of upgrade, bugs, license costs, and administration. No dedicated IT staff to do effective daily backup. No need to carry/send the tapes to offsite for safe storage incurring additional costs and inconvenience. No possibility of theft and loss of your confidential business data. Online backup provides full data protection, quick and total data recovery and lower costs.

Enterprise-level business houses are nowadays employ virtual server technologies to reduce cost, save space and simplify IT infrastructure.
Virtualization technology enables businesses to run multiple applications and operating systems on the same server. Needless to say, these systems need a sophisticated level of protection. Thus virtual machine technologies require special disaster recovery and availability solutions to protect against data loss.
Virtualization technologies deployed as a feature of online backup service can reduce the amount of hardware required and simplify recovery operations.
Online backup providers should have enterprise-class disaster recovery and high availability solutions for virtualized server environments. Protecting the data on a virtual machine is crucial and implementing a disaster recovery solution can be simplified using virtual technologies and result in a much lower overall cost. The concept of using virtualization in a disaster recovery environment is very critical. In the past, it has been expensive to get one server to replicate to the other because those two servers had to be basically identical. In order for them to be identical, the same hardware was needed in both the main and backup locations. With virtualization, those hardware costs are cut down significantly because of the ability to host several machines on one server. The online backup solution should be such that, each workload running on a physical server can replicate and failover to a dedicated virtual machine on a single physical server, eliminating the need to deploy and manage multiple physical servers at the recovery site. In a virtual machine at the online backup provider’s end, a number of the client’s physical servers can be protected. The result is a very high level of application protection and availability with a much lower TCO as virtual machine solutions offer improved efficiency and lower IT costs. Businesses can have complete confidence in the unparalleled data protection, availability, and recoverability of these solutions provide.
When choosing a remote backup company with enterprise-level disaster recovery solutions, server virtualization should be one of the prime option.
Virtualization increases the efficiency and the effectiveness of the disaster recovery process with savings in cost. An online data backup company which hosts server virtualization for disaster recovery can easily take over the job of the client’s production servers till such time that these are back in action, thereby almost eliminating any appreciable downtime. Choosing a remote backup service provider that provides virtualization for disaster recovery will allow an organization to create cost and energy efficient IT environments.

A remote backup service provides a safe, secure and incorruptible storage site for all the crucial contents in a local hard disk or local server, to guard against failure of these devices by becoming damaged or become inoperable. The remote backup service offers password-protection to keep the data secure, so that only the client has access to it if need arise. There is a growing demand for remote backup services from business houses due to the many advantages inherent in a remote backup service and support.
Upon entering into a contract with a remote backup service provider, a software package is provided to the client to access the remote backup system. Using the software, the client can upload selected data to the remote server for backing up.
Advantages of the remote backup service are, it eliminates backup hardware and backup media cost like tape drives and tapes. It also does away with constant monitoring during in-house backup procedures, which being manual, is subject to errors and omissions. It frees up business resources in the form of cash and reduced IT staff, which can be gainfully employed in improving the company infrastructure in other areas. In case of hardware failure and data loss, recovery can be in a matter of hours, instead of weeks as generally is the case with manual backups.
Some remote backup services will work continuously, backing up files as they are changed. Most remote backup services will maintain a list of versions of your files. Most remote backup services will use a 128 – 448 bit encryption to send data over unsecured links, like the internet. A few remote backup services can reduce backup by only transmitting changed data. Other common features offered by most remote backup service providers are, data compression to save bandwidth and provision for backing up of regularly used applications. Features that can be termed as special are, ability to back up multiple platforms such as Windows, Unix and Mac, and database backup. The most important aspect of remote backup is that backups are stored in a different location from the original data. Thus, online remote backup is fast becoming an alternative to traditional backup procedures. Most businesses do not rely on online remote backup as a single source for storage of critical data, but use it in addition to traditional backup solutions. It affords them a third storage area and data recovery source in the event of a catastrophic disaster. Truly, remote backup is the future.

Traditionally, businesses have not given backup and recovery the attention it deserves. Most organizations that follow some sort of backup schedule, use a variety of backup devices like tape drives, external drives, or optical disks like CD or DVD. Tapes are not very reliable and are hardly verifiable. They can be used for full backup, are badly transportable and must be stored under special conditions. Backups stored on an external drive don’t provide protection from theft or fire, can crash or become corrupt due to power outages or administrative errors and can even be misplaced. CD and DVD discs are compact, inexpensive and have very suitable capacity for regular backups. On the flip side, if really large sets of data (e.g. HDD image backup) is to be backed up, changing and numbering multiple discs may appear very tiresome. Vulnerability of CD/DVD backup is the same as with hard disks. Since optical media are usually kept near computer they don’t protect data from destruction caused by natural disasters like fire.
The best option in today’s competitive and challenging business environment, is to opt for online backup. There are many online backup services which lease space on their hard drives, guaranteeing absolute security of your data. Some of them provide only disk space and remote access to it, while other also offer online backup software for easier data management. Having an in-house backup and recovery team is thought to be less expensive than online backup, is more secure, retains confidentiality, and operational control. But partnering with a reliable online backup provider brings numerous benefits. Many organizations have made a strategic decision to transfer the management of their data backup to online backup providers who can deliver a range of benefits:
Assurance of a fixed price – Often the budget manager is unaware of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an in-house solution. But an online backup provider can set a pricing schedule based on fixed monthly costs.
Guarantees on service levels – It is often difficult to adhere to operational levels internally. Strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) provided by a backup provider enable management to learn exactly how effectively the organization’s backup and recovery operations are performing.
Greater focus on the core business – An online backup solution allows an organization to concentrate on its core competencies.
The financial repercussions of data loss can be devastating. An experienced online backup provider can minimize the risk by helping the business effectively back up its critical business data.

An online backup is a service which allows users to backup and restore computer data over the internet to an external location. Usually, the user needs to install client software, which allows him to select the data to backup, the schedule of the backup and also to restore data from the server as and when needed. The client software compresses and encrypts the data before transferring it over the internet to the remote location. The service eliminates any kind of human interaction. Online backup saves time, resulting in a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
The first online backup software providers appeared in the late 90s and became more and more popular in the 21st century. An important trend that influenced the rise of the online backup market is increasing bandwidths. 2006 and 2007 saw a tremendous rise in the number of online backup service providers. These years also, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) entered the market and online backup is often referred to as BaaS (Backup-as-a-Service).
Features commonly offered by online backup providers are ease of use,
application backup, versioning, data compression, data encryption and incremental data backup. Additional features are, open file backup, multiple platforms, web access, database backup, file filtering, bandwidth throttling and seed-load technology.
Online backup is targeted at,
Consumers – User friendliness and attractive pricing are key success factors in this segment.
SOHO/ SMB – SMB customers are a large target audience, having mission critical data. Important success factors in this segment are user friendliness, functionality and reliability/standing of the supplier.
Large businesses/Enterprise – This segment usually has a few hundreds to tens of thousands of employees, with large file and database servers. Important success factors in this segment are integration with existing platforms, easy deployability and functionality.
The online backup market contains many providers,
Vendors – Vendors of online backup software are responsible for the manufacturing of the software, and select resellers and service providers to supply the software for them to the market.
Vertically integrated players – Parties who develop their own software and also directly offer it to the market.
Service Providers – Parties who do not develop the online backup software themselves, but use software of a vendor and offer it branded as their own solution.
Assisted by the tremendous increase in digital data generated by individuals and small businesses, the worldwide online backup services market is poised for growth. IDC estimates revenue for this emerging market to reach $715 million by 2011, representing a 33.3% compound annual growth (CAGR) between 2006 and 2011.

Events that can cause data loss are, intentional deletion of a file or program, accidental deletion of a file or program, misplacement of CDs or floppies and system administrative errors. Data loss can also occur due to, power failure, head crash in a hard disk, software crash, filesystem or database corruption. Other factors are, natural causes like earthquake, flood, tornado, etc., fire, and malicious acts, such as a worm, virus, hacking, theft of physical media , sabotage, etc. Studies have shown hardware failure and human error to be the two most common causes of data loss. Although the probability is small, the only way to recover from data loss due to a natural disaster is to store backup data in a physically separate location. The cost of a data loss event is directly proportional to the value of the data and the length of time of unavailability when required, and should never be underestimated.
Though data loss can never be prevented totally, frequency of data loss events and their impact can be greatly minimized by taking proper precautions. Multiple power circuits with battery backup and a generator, using a journaling filesystem and RAID storage, maintaining antivirus protection and network firewalls, updating the system with all published security fixes and system patches will guard against some of the failures. Filesystem corruption can frequently be repaired by the user or the system administrator with proper software tools. A deleted file in most cases can be recovered.
Data loss due to hardware failure can never be foreseen and forestalled. There are commercial services that attempt to recover data from physically damaged media. Their charges vary according to the type of damage and type of storage drive.
Successful recovery from a data loss event generally requires an effective backup strategy. One of the most effective backup strategies is to have online backup. It runs on a client computer as a service and is based on a set of schedule or it can be run manually by the users from that computer. It can backup all your files and overwrite your existing ones or only those modified. It is based on a client server architecture, meaning that there is a server process which runs on the server and its main task is to store your files on the server. Online data backup service has given security and insurance for the user and has helped many people/companies protect their most important assets against hardware failures and natural calamities.

We are all aware of the pitfalls of inadequate backups. So, what is the most effective way to backup and secure your data? The options are Online backup and Tape backup.
Tape technology has gradually evolved into the high performance medium we use today, but it has drawbacks. Online backup solves a lot of the issues associated with tape backup. These are,
1. For tape backup, additional hardware and software to be purchased and maintained, as also routine purchase of backup media. It also requires software maintenance. Online backup does not entail purchase of any additional hardware or software.
2. Tape backup requires discipline and regularity to do effective daily backup. Online backup is fully automated, so more reliable.
3. Tapes are required to be transported to offsite for safe storage, thus incurring additional costs and inconvenience. With online backup there is no need to transport anything. Client’s data is safely stored at a high security Data Center with redundant copies.
4. Restore time from tape of a single file is minimum < 30 minutes, which is directly proportional to more down time, more costs and lost productivity. Single file minimum restore time is <30 seconds with Online backup. Restore as often as required at no additional costs.
5. With a simple tape backup, anyone can steal the tape and access the files by restoring on another computer. Online backup is secure being encrypted and compressed. The data cannot be retrieved by anyone except the client.
So how exactly does online backup work? Since no hardware is required, service commences with a simple software install on selected servers, desktops, or laptops. The central interface is installed on a desktop and configured with data selection, retention schedules, and other settings.
Data will then automatically seed via the Internet or private line to a mass storage vault. A “seed” is the initial backup, which requires your full data set.
Subsequent to the first backup, changed data is detected and is the only data to be transferred, compressed, and stored as a new backup.
The major advantage to Online backup as opposed to the traditional tape backup is that data is immediately available for download, and small restores become much faster and cheaper. With Internet connectivity becoming faster and cheaper by the day, Online backups are becoming the norm for many SMEs replacing tape backup. Studies show that one in five have already switched away from traditional backup tapes, with 10 percent expected to shift across over the next 12 months.