SAN DIEGO -- Symantec Corp.'s new
online data backup service met with a frosty
response from users of all sizes at Storage Networking World
(SNW), Tuesday.
Symantec Protection Network Online Backup Service is the first
Software as a Service (SaaS) offering from
the company and is aimed at small and midsized businesses that
require many of the data protection functions of larger
organizations but do not have the budget or expertise to
implement them in-house.
A Symantec official at SNW added that the service, which will
encrypt backup data sent over the wire, will allow users to have
"disaster recovery advancements without the costly upgrade cycles
of traditional approaches." Symantec did not release pricing
details or a date for when the service will be officially
available.
Despite the stated advantages of SaaS, many users are more
concerned than ever that outsourcing will not meet their company's
security and control requirements, and will turn out to be as
expensive as implementing the systems themselves.
Andrew Leopold, microsystems support manager at Loma Linda
University said security and bandwidth issues are the key reasons
why he wouldn't consider outsourcing backup over the wire. "We
can't even get our LAN fast enough for backups, never mind doing
them over the WAN, and the price of bandwidth at $61 per megabit
makes it cost prohibitive," he said. Loma Linda University, a
medical institute, backs up under 10 terabytes (TB) of data with
retention procedures that are governed by the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). "We don't know what
security the service provider has and whether it would protect our
data for HIPAA … it's just way too risky," he said.
Another user, Richard Carpenter, director in the technical
services group at AllTel Communications, said his company debates
the pros and cons of outsourcing backup regularly. "Our biggest
concern is privacy … when it's not our employees handling our data
it's a worry." Another stumbling block he foresees is in the
restore process and how that would be handled as his storage and
application groups work very closely. "They are tightly tied
together … so how does that work if and when we want to recover
data?"
AllTel is a 2 petabyte (PB) EMC Corp. shop, running Symantec
NetBackup along with Advancedd Digital Information Corp. (ADIC) and
StorageTek tape drives. Carpenter said, "If you'd asked me five to
six years ago before we'd staffed up, I might be more interested."
Although he added that outsourced services back then were often
very expensive compared with managing the operation internally.
Symantec's response to the security worries users have is
encryption. All data crossing the wire is encrypted, and only the
changes to that data need to be sent, reducing the bandwidth
consumption issues, the company claimed.
Industry analysts said the offering is far from a slam-dunk for
Symantec, but that the opportunity does exist for the right market.
Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst with the Taneja Group
believes that vendors today are cognizant of the mistakes made
during the late 90s when Storage Service Providers (SSP) lead by
companies like StorageNetworks Inc. were offering capacity on
demand to hungry dot-coms. "They have learned, I hope, that large
companies will not part with their primary data, but if I am a
small business, with no staff, having someone else take care of my
backups and RTOs and RPOs is absolutely a good thing," he said.
Similarly Jerome Wendt, lead analyst and president of Datacenter
Infrastructure Group Inc., believes smaller businesses that do not
have a staff of IT folks worrying about losing their jobs, will be
the companies that adopt these services the fastest.
Coincidently, Symantec wasn't the only product company throwing
its hat into the online data backup services arena this week. EMC,
during its earnings call Tuesday, announced its intention to move
into this market, although offered no details on when or what its
service will look like.
Meanwhile, Iron Mountain Corp. with LiveVault, Seagate
Technology with EVault, Arsenal Digital Solutions Worldwide Inc.,
AmeriVault Corp. and Berkley Data Systems Inc. among many others,
are all building online data backup businesses that appear to be
thriving right now. It seems the reservation many users have with
incumbent players, like EMC and Symantec, is whether they can shift
their business models sufficiently to support SaaS and can build
the trust required to offer such a service.
"It's quite a leap to go from buying a few software licenses to
handing you all my backup data," said one user who preferred to
remain anonymous, as he is not authorized to speak with the
press.