Organizations of all sizes in many different industries still struggle with choices for storing, protecting, and managing growing amounts of business information and data. Companies want to move away from tape backup and traditional server backup software because of the complexity of dealing with them on daily basis and the small costs that quickly add up.

With today’s reliance on data integrity, it is essential to have up-to-date and easily restorable backups to not only fulfill compliance obligations, but also to adhere to designated business continuity and disaster recovery strategies. A business that loses even a day’s worth of data can be devastated by its impact.

On-premise backup

Typically, an organization will back up its data locally to a tape, disk or other media. However, backing up all data locally can be very expensive due to the huge amount of disk space it can take up. Also, any local backup copy is vulnerable to getting destroyed during a disaster or hardware failure. Therefore, an offsite copy of data will provide the assurance of being able to recover all the data if a disaster were to occur.

The Pros and Cons of on-premise backup:

Pros
Local Backup – Corporate data is stored/handled internally. 
Control – You are now in control of how data is maintained and managed, however, your staff needs to adhere to best practices in order to keep data integrity and availability. 

Cons
Infrastructure Cost – Up-front large investment and required maintenance ongoing costs. Initial investment is high but pays off over time
Resources – Dedicated IT staff for maintenance/support is a requirement with technical backup skill set and associated costs.

Cloud backup

Cloud backup will be executed on an organization’s data via an offsite and remote cloud storage platform. A cloud backup provider will allocate cloud storage that is accessible over the Internet or backup software via a purpose-built user interface or vendor API. Cloud backup storage can be used to virtually store and back up all types of data or applications. Unlike traditional backup techniques, cloud backup is highly flexible and scalable in scaling up and down on run time.

Cloud backup is a managed service where the entire infrastructure and supporting services are managed completely by the vendor. Besides data backup, cloud backup is combined with disaster recovery solutions and may also provide an exact instance of a server, desktop or entire system.

The Pros and Cons of Cloud Backup: 

Pros
Pay as you go – Low cost for services. No large up-front investment cost, a monthly charge for resources used. No new infrastructure requirements. No software licensing costs
Scalability and flexibility – cloud backup is highly flexible and scalable in scaling up and down on run time.
Resources – low requirement for technical staff. Third parties are doing hard work 
Reliable – No middle layer greatly improves the reliability and stability of the software and leaves no space for malware to interfere.
Simple-to-use – fast, reliable restoration of the data needed

Cons
Control and Security of data –Data location and visibility is out of your control therefore if privacy and regulatory compliance are concerns, this may not be the right solution for you
Seeding data and full recovery - Depending on the total capacity of data, the first full backup and/or full recovery of site data could prove to be very time-consuming and impactful on production systems.
Size limitations - Depending on bandwidth availability, every organization will have a threshold for the most reasonable capacity of data that can be transferred daily to the cloud. These limitations will have an impact on backup strategies
Discontinuation of the service - Understanding the most graceful "exit strategy" for the service is just as important as vetting specific features. Termination or early-withdrawal fees, cancellation notification, and data extraction are just a few of the factors to be considered.

Taking the plunge: pain points 
What makes the decision far from easy to take is that there are conflicting arguments and pressures. 
Costs are a primary concern but organizations cannot ignore issues related to security and compliance. 

Moving to the Cloud is often based on the following four pain points: 

- Lack of resources to build an infrastructure
- Software licensing costs are too expensive
- Lack of resources or lack of budget to fund completely, especially in IT
- Lack of technical know-how to maximize benefits of IT systems

An organization needs to be looking far beyond costs as a sole consideration. Larger organizations, particularly those operating in industries with strict legislation and compliance regulations should factor in: 

- Third-parties are handling confidential data 
- Redundancy – what happens if the solution provider fails? 

Small and medium sized organizations are often faced with the dilemma whether they should go for a cloud or an on-premise solution. There is really no right or wrong answer but companies need to assess their business needs and infrastructure before taking a decision. The key is to find a balance between both delivery models and adapt according to the business’s needs. Simply put: choose what makes business, security and technical sense.

If you would like to discuss your business needs and get an expert’s opinion on what solution would make most sense for your organization, feel free to contact me at 1-866-610-8489 or drop me a line here. 

Paul Oh, Vice President Services
Sentia