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Managed services provider Logicalis launched two new cloud offerings, Cloud Storage for Backup and a Multi-Cloud Management Portal, aimed at chief information officers (CIOs) and other IT pros in creating and managing service-defined enterprises.
To use Cloud Storage for Backup, Logicalis integrates a cloud storage gateway appliance into a client’s existing backup installation, allowing the client to back up mission-critical data to the cloud where it is not only safely protected and stored off-site, but where it could be more easily retrieved.
“For the Cloud Storage for Backup solution, we are targeting midmarket organizations that already have a disaster recovery solution with recovery time objective metrics for critical data in place,” David Kinlaw, practice manager, data protection and availability services, Logicalis US, told eWEEK. “The solution would target data with long RTO times–Tier 3 through archive.”
Kinlaw explained the kind of data that would not be recovered at the DR site but would be brought back during the primary site rebuild after a DR event, and how the solution offers customers offsite backup storage, reduction or elimination of tape for long-term retention needs, and best-of-breed data deduplication and replication.
Available as a service through a monthly subscription, the company claims using cloud storage for backup can reduce archival costs by up to 30 percent over using traditional tape storage methods.
Built on a VMware platform, Logicalis’ multi-cloud management portal is a way for users to see all of their cloud resources, upload and control virtual machines, view their data loads and what that costs them each month, see their resource usage – it puts all of their pertinent cloud data in one place.
In addition, Logicalis has a number of other cloud services, including its own multi-tenant managed cloud, a multi-tenant self-service “on demand” cloud, and a Logicalis-hosted private cloud.
“Businesses still worry about their data, and the same questions remain whether that data is stored in the cloud or elsewhere,” Kinlaw said. “They worry about whether or not their data is protected, if it’s secure, and who has access to it. But any questions about the viability of cloud vendors has been mostly resolved by now, and businesses know that the top-tier vendors can be counted on long term. Continuous availability is still a valid concern, but solutions are emerging that store data in multiple cloud data centers or spread data among different cloud vendors.”
Kinlaw said he sees cloud-based storage evolving in two ways–for smaller organizations, it will entirely replace some storage functions, including backup and archiving.
“The economics and convenience of a fully managed, operationally expensed storage resource will be irresistible to companies operating under today’s budget constraints,” he said.
Second, for larger organizations, it will become the tertiary tier in a multi-tier architecture that uses solid state technology as the high-performance tier; high-capacity, near-line drives for storage where access and availability requirements force it to reside on site; and cloud storage for data when access and security characteristics allow data to reside in the cloud, something which he said would increase dramatically as cloud provisioning and federation technologies mature.