90% of Organizations Think Their Data Vulnerable in Event of Disaster

According to the survey, 90% of IT decision makers think their data is vulnerable in the event of a disaster. While only a 3% increase in perceived risk from the 2010 survey findings, this is particularly notable considering all of the focus on improving DR over the last few years. 27% experienced some form of data security incident in the last year, only 15% of which were due to natural disasters.

 The survey also found:

• The number of respondents describing their organization's data as "extremely vulnerable" edged up from 8% in the 2010 survey to 11%, and the number who felt minimally vulnerable or not vulnerable shrank from 51% to 31%.
• The most common data security incident was virus attacks, up 7% points from 2010, showing the need to have a robust backup process in place as viruses can permeate multiple data copies.
• Operating system failure (48%) was the next most common security issue, which saw a 21% point increase from the previous survey.
• While 68% of respondents back up data daily or more for DR purposes, 16% back up weekly or less, showing there is still room for adoption of best practices.
• Companies that aren't able to restore their archive or DR data face significant delays in business activities, lost revenue, and a negative impact on resources. Half of all respondents noted that a data restore problem could put service level agreements with customers at risk. All of these consequences directly affect a company's financials.

The heightened awareness of the vulnerability of data assets and the consequences of a disaster have made DR an IT budget priority. According to a survey by industry analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group, one quarter of IT professionals listed business continuity/DR programs among their organization's most important IT priorities for 2012 spending.

Natural disasters such as this summer's wildfires have dominated recent discussion around disaster recovery planning for IT, but there are other threats to data security that are even more pressing for IT managers.  We're seeing a strong, sustained interest in the value of deduplicated and replicated disk backup and path-to-tape solutions for a best-practices approach to DR. In addition, many customers are now seeking all-in-one solutions that protect both physical and virtual environments. Increasingly, companies are also turning to cloud software and services for a solution to DR challenges.

Overland's top tech guy: Great things ahead

Barrall talks tape

We had the chance to talk to Geoff Barrall, the founder of BlueArc and Data Robotics, about his work at Overland Storage, where he is charge of product engineering.

He came into Overland after having been his own boss for two decades but "realised that the challenges are very similar and found my feet". CEO Eric Kelly and sales and marketing VP Jillian Mansolf are great to work with, and "I have the right team in place (including some of my old friends from BlueArc and Data Robotics) and everybody is working really well together".

He couldn't discuss the product roadmap in any specific terms at all, but he did say "it's the most exciting I've ever had", and discussed it in a little more detail.

"On the SNAP Server side of the business it's public knowledge that we acquired the Maxiscale scale-out file system which we're excited to integrate and deliver.

Tape market large and growing

"As for tape it's really exciting for me to be working in that area. My Phd is in Cybernetics and so the fact that I'm actually responsible for delivering robotics for a living now ties right back to that. The tape market is large and growing but Overland has work to do to regain its former share.

"Fortunately very little innovation has been applied to this market for some time (by any vendor) and so it's a great area to be creative and I have one of the few teams remaining in the world with the skills to create the necessary technology."

There's a surprise. Tape product engineering developments haven't been switched off. HP, IBM, Quantum, SpectraLogic and other tape product suppliers can look forward to some interesting competition.

"We also introduced two SAN products," said Barrall. "These seem to be doing well and it's exciting to have a product portfolio to work with that spans NAS, SAN, Archive Disk and Tape. Lots of room for synergy there.

Should people be concerned out the length of time it's taking to produce products from his engineering department? "Anybody who knows engineering will know that it take around 18 months to deliver something new and around 24 for something great. I'm working on that kind of time frame and am very excited about 2011 and beyond."

Vendor Metamorphosis, Or Resurrection?

Back in July, I was skeptical that longtime tape automation vendors Tandberg Data and Overland Storage would successfully transit the tempest that is the SMB storage market in the recession. Both are announcing products and road maps that fit their SMB customers better, and Overland has both managed to raise another $12 million and hire Geoff Barrall to be their CTO, which could keep them around long enough to deliver on the vision. MAID pioneer Copan wasn't so lucky, however.

The core of Overland's vision is to make the transition from collecting 80 percent of revenue from HP's OEM tape automation sales to resurrecting the once incredibly valuable SnapServer brand. Their new CEO, Eric Kelly, has an attachment to Snap, having been part of the team that bought it from Quantum for $10 million and sold it to Adaptec for $100 million, now bringing it to Overland for $3 million. As often as Snap's been bought and sold, a guy could make a good living just being their investment banker. Kelly's made some good decisions at Overland, killing off their Ultamus SAN array being at the top of my list.

I had lunch with Eric and Overland's marketing and sales VP Jillian Mansolf a couple of weeks ago, and they get that the keys to the SMB market are making things easy to use and developing channel loyalty. This is, by the way, a model that the pre-Dell Equallogic executed very well.

Now they've added Barrall, who founded BlueArc, which makes high-speed NAS devices. Barrall also founded Data Robotics, which makes the Drobo NAS, and he developed the "Beyond RAID" technology that allows a NAS to use different sized disks in a RAID array. Barrall clearly understands how to make a successful NAS company, so I won't count Overland among the walking wounded just yet.

The new S2000 iSCSI array isn't just a re-package of the iSCSI target Snap servers have had for years. They've re-written both the iSCSI target to make it faster, and the user interface, replacing the web GUI with Windows plug-ins that greatly simplify provisioning. They've also added a vCenter plugin and high availability for VMware via replication and failover. With SAS and SATA options and expandability to 120TB via SAS JBODs, S2000 is competitive with other entry-level SAN arrays like HP's MSA and Dell Equallogic and is probably a step up form EMC's AX.

Overland Storage Launches NEO E-Series Family of Tape Libraries

SAN DIEGO - February 9, 2009 - Overland Storage, Inc. (Nasdaq: OVRL) today announced the availability of the first models in its next-generation NEO SERIES line of scalable, automated tape libraries. The NEO E-Series libraries provide a host of embedded functionality along with simplified installation and operation to meet a wide range of demanding data protection and long-term archive requirements.

The NEO 2000E and NEO 4000E extend the reliability, serviceability and data availability of the award-winning NEO SERIES tape backup and archive solution. The NEO product line, which has earned a reputation for rock-solid performance and widespread compatibility, has been enhanced with a variety of embedded capabilities that reinforce technology leadership and investment protection. The new NEO E-Series enables embedded SCSI, FC and SAS connectivity, easing installations while ensuring connectivity with future interface technologies. Other embedded capabilities include:

• Improved performance and feature support with enhanced processing power,
• Further investment protection via Integrated partitioning,
• More efficient data access due to improved mailslot functionality,
• Ease of management via remote diagnostics with proactive monitoring,
• Superior reliability and serviceability through the use of enhanced robotics, more efficient power supply and innovative library/drive interface.

Additionally, the new NEO E-Series integrates easily with Overland’s REO SERIES® of disk-based backup and recovery VTLs, Snap Server® NAS appliances, ULTAMUS® RAID SAN storage as well as other disk-based products.

According to Ravi Pendekanti, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Overland Storage, the latest enhancements to the NEO tape family strengthen the company’s leadership in providing mid-range customers with affordable, scalable end-to-end data protection solutions. “Over the past decade, the NEO tape libraries have proven themselves as important assets in our customers’ end-to-end data protection and archiving strategies,” he says. “Therefore, it is imperative that we continue to add new features and functionality while leveraging NEO’s highly regarded and trusted tape technology and proven product architecture.”

In addition to enhancing reliability and serviceability, the NEO E-Series adds support for LTO HH tape drive technologies and direct-connect interfaces, lowering initial expenditures and enabling customers to add new capabilities over time while protecting their investments in tape-based backup and recovery.

According to Robert Amatruda, research director at IDC for tape and removable storage, the mid-range tape automation market is expected to exceed $1 billion in annual sales, with more than 100,000 units shipped in 2008. “The majority of companies still depend on tape for long-term archive and disaster recovery,” he says. “Overland’s new NEO E-Series, with its increased functionality, should integrate well with a company's existing disk-based solutions, and help companies meet recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO/RPO) in both SAN and NAS environments.”

With the new NEO E-Series, Overland’s resellers are well positioned to provide their customers with expansion-on-demand and flexible functionality that scales easily to keep pace with increasing backup and archive needs. “Most of our customers use tape for handling backups or as an archive solution in a disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) scenario,” explains Dan Peichel, vice president of sales for Peripheral Products Inc., a Plano, Tex.-based Overland channel partner. “We are extremely pleased to see Overland extend the capabilities of the well-established NEO platform, ensuring that this high-capacity, flexible product line remains a major part of our customer offerings for years to come.”

Overland’s NEO 2000E scales from 30 to 240 cartridges per module while the NEO 4000E scales from 60 to 240 cartridges. NEO2000E and 4000E can be scaled with each other in an almost limitless combination, providing a variety of capacity points to meet end user needs. Both tape library models are available now from Overland’s channel partners worldwide with a starting MSRP of $12,333.