The volume of data generated and stored by businesses is growing at an uncontrollable rate and companies have invested substantially in IT systems to help manage this growth. The challenge they face is how to manage their data storage infrastructure cost-effectively. More and more businesses are recognising that an effective way to reduce overall IT spend and, more specifically, the high cost of data storage is to outsource the provision of IT services to a third-party supplier. But businesses have become wary of 100 per cent outsourcing contracts under which they lose control of the output and direction of the IT environment. With the explosion of data being led by the need to improve quality of service to customers, enterprises are also striving to ensure that quality and system availability levels remain high across the infrastructure.
This has prompted businesses to consider the nature of the environment in which data is stored and effectiveness of their recovery systems.