US businesses think storage is worthy

Many US companies are increasingly concerned about the availability of their network and have identified storage worthy of their hard cash, according to Gary Bloom, CEO of storage vendor Veritas.

In his keynote speech at the Oracle OpenWorld Conference in California, Bloom outlined tips for companies to keep abreast of their data recovery strategy by making the most of their existing resources.

Bloom's top tips are:

- To Perform regular backups of data residing on desktops and laptops. Synchronise desktop and laptop data to the server daily.

- Make sure you backup directories, catalogues, not just data. Once the data is organised, it is quicker to recover it.

- Run similarly designed backup and storage environments, so that incompatibility issues won't disturb data recovery.

- Make sure that the backup facilities are available. Have all the hardware, software, network connectivity, and services needed to run all operations.

- Do not place backup facilities near each other. Businesses have traditionally put backup facilities close together because of the limitations of hardware-based storage systems. But clustering and online storage technologies make it possible to put data in repositories in any location.

- Train staff as part of an internal disaster response team. They should be able to identify the applications and business operations which should receive first priority in a recovery.