Many IT administrators at small and medium businesses (SMBs) are facing a new budget cycle as the new year dawns. One of the items in which many are considering investing is data protection technology. Most have experienced an explosion in the amount of data requiring protection while not experiencing an equivalent increase in their IT budget. Additionally, the responsibility of complying with new governmental and industry regulations for data retention, archiving and electronic discovery has fallen squarely in the lap of IT staffs, which means they’ll need to stretch their budgets farther.

Data protection used to be an easier proposition. You could simply designate a system as the backup server, install some backup software, attach a tape library and start backing up production servers to it. But, with the advent of critical production applications, server and storage virtualization, critical data stored on desktops and laptops, and increased recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO and RPO), data protection has become much more complex.

It is easy to say that organizations must be more current and comprehensive in their backup, recovery and archiving procedures. Yet, few companies have the luxury of being able to assign the resources to address all these tasks optimally. The reality is that most organizations now count on increased productivity to drive profits. This means accomplishing more with fewer resources.

For companies looking to improve their data protection technology and procedures, there are a bewildering number of point solutions and possible combinations for data protection and archiving to be considered. It was not long ago when the backup solution was based on one piece of software. Now organizations must decide on all the hardware, too, including the compatible and scalable nature of each piece. In addition, they must consider a number of capabilities: disk-to-disk backup, VTLs, replication, snapshots, CDP, de-duplication, sophisticated archiving, email archiving, data encryption and security. Many options exist, and many more are coming.

Traditional solutions for data protection, email archiving and SAN storage are too complicated. There are too many parts to manage and consider: software, hardware, disk, tape, network, SAN -- the decisions are overwhelming. Once the technology decisions have been made, the pieces have to be put together, which can take weeks or even months.

Now, more than ever, organizations need the best products available to provide them with effective data protection. A new approach for companies to consider for their storage and data protection is an all-in-one automated solution preconfigured to address all data-storage and protection functionality, usually called an "appliance."

Organizations piecing a solution together will need to work with several companies. Each will have a comprehensive and in-depth view of what their specific product can do to address a particular problem. These vendors, however, do not have a total view of the organization's requirements, and are not able to address the entire problem. When buying individual components, an organization makes a huge trade-off. Buyers search for components optimized for their specific function; not for a best-of-breed total solution. This purchasing process takes time and a complex set of comparisons to work with compatible vendors. An appliance vendor, by contrast, picks the best and most compatible components and takes ownership of them. Most SMBs will only solve their backup problem once. The appliance vendor has solved the same problem hundreds of times.

When a company purchases an appliance, it forgoes the relationship with the individual component vendors. Thus, an appliance vendor is motivated to install a reliable product because they will have to support it! The data protection appliance vendor will have a more holistic view of an organization's problem and is more concerned that the entire data-storage and protection solution works to satisfaction.

Upgrading an appliance is also simpler for the end user. When an organization upgrades, it can be sure that all components remain compatible with each other. With an individual components solution, an upgrade often results in an entire system overhaul. Finally, a data protection appliance allows a company to buy the capacity and capabilities it needs now and expand the appliance as the company's requirements grow. The business dictates the functionality of a storage solution, rather than the reverse.

The conventional integration of a components approach requires manual integration and diagnostic activities that consume both human and system resources. An appliance addresses this problem by providing a pre-integrated simple-to-install solution. This is a benefit for all companies but is particularly useful for SMBs that normally have only a few minutes a day to address any one problem.

Below is a short laundry list of things to consider when evaluating a data protection appliance:

• Easy to purchase, install, manage and support.

• Optimizes backups, archives, restores, disaster recovery and electronic discovery to meet corporate RTO and RPO.

• Complies fully with regulated retention policies.

• Efficiently uses media.

• Automates daily functions and reduces administrative hours.

• Provides an adaptable and scalable foundation for future data protection and storage needs.

In sum, organizations must look beyond the conventional approaches and toward recovery solutions that are packaged and implemented with appliance approaches that incorporate the best in component technologies. To do less will probably assure being an early casualty of the tremendous data changes coming in the 21st century.

Laura Buckley is vice president of Product Development for STORServer, Inc. www.STORServer.com