From: Ronan McCurtin, Director of sales, Adam Continuity
Sir – At Adam Continuity we have held many client forums on cloud-based backup and business continuity. It has become apparent that companies are not only looking at this new and exciting technology for all the benefits it offers, but also because they are becoming increasingly aware of the risks of using tape technology.
One guest, a network manager for a large insurance company, said that his reason for attending the forum was simply that he was very aware of the ‘risk of tape’. He was not alone; the medium of tape is unreliable and over time tapes deteriorate and the risks increase.
The use of multiple software packages to backup separate platforms adds to the risk. The introduction of new hardware can mean older tapes are not always compatible. There is also the associated cost of maintaining the necessary hardware.
The final straw for our guest was that he had just discovered that his tape logistics company had advised him that they would not be picking up his tapes during the Olympics as these journeys were deemed non-essential travel!
Even if his tapes had been collected, how quickly could they have been returned if needed? The time needed to just catalogue the tapes meant there was no chance of a quick restoration.
The real risk of tape was brought home to us during a rehearsal with a client when we were unable to read any data on the tape. After some investigation it was found that the head on their tape machine was misaligned and therefore highly unlikely that the data could be read by any other machine apart from that one!
A recent poll for European companies found that as many as 42 per cent of companies still put their trust in tape technology to backup their servers. We are now in the 21st century and there is no need to rely on tape, as modern cost effective solutions are available.
