Tapeless Backup
Some storage professionals are finding that when all is said and done, sending backups offsite electronically is not only easier, more secure and reliable, but also just as cost-effective as shipping physical tapes.
Such attitudes are causing Tapeless Back systems to become prolific in the business world. Sure, users say, tape still has a lower cost than Tapeless Backup, but when you add up the number of tapes you will need in a daily tape-rotation scheme, plus replacement costs for worn or used tapes, tape's cost-per-gigabyte advantage loses ground.
Tapes high prices are one reason why so many businesses are getting rid of it and changing over to Tapeless Backup. Many businesses only keep data for 90 days and with that kind of turn over in data, tape can be a huge expense. Moreover, if for security reasons some of that data needs to be deleted that can be rather difficult to do.
Another consideration for Tapeless Backup is for the rural organizations. In these cases it is the shipping of the tape that can become problematic and a remote backup would be a far more efficent solution. Typically the places that are fairly remote find that locating a courier, and the expense and worrying over whether it got there or not has become a pain in the neck. Going the Tapeless Backup route has helped these specific businesses enormously. Other businesses are taking a more gradual approach to tapeless backup. Many of these businesses still do their daily full backups on tape but they are moving certain longer-term storage to Tapeless Backup. While it does not completely negate the rising cost of tape, the gradual turn to Tapeless Backup has lowered their cost to a significant level. The question for many smaller businesses is, now that they have decided to make the turn to Tapeless Backup, how they will implement it. Software is an obvious choice. There are many different choices if you choose to try Tapeless Backup in-house. However, for those who are more hands off, there is the option of utilizing an outside company for offsite Tapeless Backup. There are literally countless numbers of companies offering businesses of all sizes the tools necessary to have there data stored safely via Tapeless Backup. The need in today's business world for data storage is paramount and with so many options out there, it is difficult to know which one best suits your needs. Tapeless Backup offers more cost effective solutions for many businesses and let us face it, in today's competitive world anything that can drastically cut cost over the long term is worth looking into.
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