Continuous uptime, once a requirement for banks, hospitals and casinos, is becoming a necessity for businesses of all types.

In the late 1960s, when businesses began to deploy mainframe and ‘mini’ computers to handle their information management demands, they relied on batch backups to magnetic tape as a means to themselves from all too frequent hardware and software failures. As transaction volumes grew, so did the window necessary for periodic saves. Because faith in these systems hadn’t yet been established, organizations maintained established paper-based business systems as a fallback. While tape backup systems aren’t terribly advanced, most companies still perform saves to tape and store the media off-site.