As a small to medium sized business (SMB) grows and its technology investment evolves one of the biggest challenges for that business is how to protect its growing IT infrastructure. While there is a wide array of options available, Hybrid Cloud Backup for the SMB is a solution that allows for a simple installation and allows the SMB to get back to focusing on the business while at the same time knowing that its data is safe, secure and available.

The SMB is a unique segment of the market for data protection and one that has been traditionally under-served. The SMB typically does not have a dedicated IT staff or if it does it is a very small one, often one person, wearing many hats. They often have a very close relationship with an IT consultant or reseller that is intimately involved in the technology decisions in the business. They have limited access to an off-site storage facility in the case of a disaster yet are often the most at risk if a disaster does occur.

Another factor unique to the SMB market is that most, especially those started in the last five to six years, are almost 100% dependent on technology to operate. In many cases – unlike older businesses – there simply is no manual workaround to conduct business. The technology must stay up and running, and downtime literally stops the business. As a result recovery of even a few hours or worse waiting a day for a new server to be brought in can be very costly. Ironically SMBs may be more time sensitive to recovery than even the largest enterprise data center, and the costs incurred by not being able to do business are felt more directly because of its smaller size.

Finally, the SMB must focus on the business, not on technology, so the solutions selected must be simple, reliable and cost effective.

Traditional On-Premise Backup

Traditional on-premise backup solutions are lacking when trying to address the above challenges and requirements. Either these solutions for the SMB are typically enhanced consumer user backup applications or they are scaled down enterprise backup applications. In the first case, the backup application provides only  limited functionality and does not typically provide protection for applications that might be in use at the time of the backup. In the second case, scaled down enterprise applications are too complicated and require too much attention to be appropriate in the "business first" mentality of the SMB.

In both cases, the on-premise applications do not address the need to move the SMB's data to a secure offsite facility so it can be protected if a disaster occurs. Disk backup, for example, is a very common backup method for the SMB. Many SMB’s entire data set can fit on one or a few hard drives. The challenge with disk backup is removing the data from the facility; as a result, the backup is often left in the building sitting right next to the server.

Not only is this data not secure from a disaster, it often does not provide much capability for a historical type of recovery. For example: it’s tax time, you need to look at a spreadsheet or database as it appeared last year, and for some reason that version of the file is no longer available on your active hard disk. With many disk-to-disk-only solutions, your ability to go back more than a few weeks in time to recover data is limited.

Finally, on-premise solutions often use agents, small software applications that send data to the backup server or device. These agents can be expensive and can cause stability issues with some servers. They can cause problems in any size business. The agile and often fast growing nature of an SMB means that servers are added or can change very quickly, and having to install and test agents for compatibility is something with which the business would rather not deal.

Online-Only Backup

Online backup was developed to address many of the issues that on-premise backup faces. While online backup does address the movement of data outside of the businesses primary facility, it shares many of the other challenges that on-premise solutions face – and worse, because by addressing the movement of data off-site it introduces several additional challenges that the SMB may not be able to tolerate.

It is important to note that most online backup solutions that offer an SMB option are exactly that: an option. Most online backup solutions started with the home user or consumer as their primary customer and for the smallest of SMBs, the one-man show, this was initially fine. As the business grows, the SMB needs more. And while some of these consumer offerings have added a "pro" or business option, they for the most part have merely amounted to more storage space.

Beyond that, they suffer many of the same challenges as local backup solutions: agents need to be installed, and even the "pro" retention windows are short term. Moreoever, there is a particular concern with the agents that online backup uses. Since each server is backed up individually across the Internet, each server is vying for your bandwidth to the Internet and caution must be taken to ensure that too many servers or systems are not backing up data simultaneously.

As is the case with any backup application, there is some performance impact while the backup occurs. The problem is that with agent based online backup in combination with the slower internet connection, the length of time that this performance impact is apparent is significantly longer than a traditional local backup.

Of greater concern is the aspect that these solutions are indeed online only, and while some technology exists to allow backups to be efficiently transmitted by eliminating redundant data, there is NO solution for having to do a complete restore.

When a server needs to be completely recovered, ALL of its data either needs to be slowly restored across the Internet, which could take days, or some services can ship you, at extra expense, a hard drive that has your latest copy of data on it. The problem with the hard drive ship method is that you obviously have to wait for the shipping company to deliver it and more importantly, a restore of this type is typically being performed manually outside of the backup application to which the user had become accustomed.

When a server fails and the business grinds to a halt is when you need recovery to be simple and fast. It is not the time for having to go through special steps or procedures, or worse, waiting for the UPS delivery person so you can bring your business back online.

Hybrid Cloud Backup for SMB

Hybrid Cloud Backup solutions like those offered by Axcient are focusing directly on the SMB market and addressing the weaknesses of both on-premise backup solutions and online backup solutions by creating a new backup system that is ideal for the growing business.

Hybrid cloud based backup solutions leverage the Internet like an online backup solution does, but they also place an appliance at your location. Companies like Axcient use an appliance that receives the local backup and stores it. It then replicates this backup across the Internet to their cloud storage resources. This not only minimizes the performance impact of the local server during backup; since backups are to a local appliance they happen much faster. Having a local appliance also addresses the local restore issues.

This appliance can be sized to meet most needs for long-term recovery, and if the data is not on the local appliance it can be restored from the Cloud Storage service to which the appliance has been sending its data. The result is the ideal data placement balance for recoveries. In most cases when disaster strikes, what needs to be restored is the most recent copy of data and typically all or the large majority of that data needs to be restored. Restores that are months or even years old are not typically the result of a server rebuild need, they are in response to a specific request – a legal action or audit for example, and as such are typically small in size nor do they have the time pressures associated with a server failure. As a result retrieving these from the cloud is more than fast enough.

Hybrid Cloud Backup for SMB should also be agentless, meaning nothing has to be installed on the servers that need to be protected. This makes the implementation and ongoing operation of the Hybrid Cloud SMB system significantly easier and more adaptable to changes in the business.

SMBs are focused on their business, and while many leverage and are dependent on technology they don't have the time or desire to be technology experts. For them technology is a tool; they do not want it to become a hobby. As a result, many small businesses outsource their IT services or at least rely heavily on an IT reseller to help with supporting their technology investments. Interestingly, many small backup applications and almost all online backup applications exclude these valuable assets from the process.

Hybrid Cloud Backup for SMB can change all that. They can leverage the IT service provider to help set up the appliance and subsequently provide the service provider with access to their various customers’ backups so they can be involved in supporting their backup process with the same high degree of proficiency as they do the rest of the environment.

Hybrid Cloud Backup for the SMB addresses the shortcomings in both on-premise backup as well as online backup. It provides a simple, fast, cost effective way to protect data locally while leveraging the cloud for long-term storage. It allows SMBs to focus on growing the business as opposed to growing their IT staff.