Whether a service business or one that deals primarily with physical products, there’s no getting around the need for networked data resources.
For a business built around data, the need to secure corporate data systems and ensuring their continued reliability is obvious. But even for firms that are more physically tangible in terms of product offerings, keeping business data continuity is important because it is needed for the supply chain. Every business needs data continuity these days.
Three challenges to this reliability are virtualization, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and remote systems.
“Coping with these new business paradigms necessitates scalable storage, easy to use backup, and methods for bringing new BYOD devices into the security fold,” noted a recent ITProPortal article.
HP provides a comprehensive range of Secure Access and Continuity products that address precisely these issues, according to the ITProPortal piece. It recommended HP IMC Smart Connect Virtual Appliance Software to help ensure data continuity, as the solution comes with a WLAN manager that will take control of how mobile devices are accessing the network.
“Client virtualization provides a uniform, secure desktop experience for a wide variety of client devices,” noted the article, and “HP supports Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix VDI-in-a-Box (News - Alert), Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and VMware View, so any of these virtual machines can be used to provide cloud desktop applications to your mobile devices, keeping the experience mobile whilst the data remains within corporate control.”
HP's StoreVirtual VSA software uses a virtual machine to group existing storage into a virtual iSCSI array, and then offers two options for replicating data between sites. Another option is Veeam Backup and Replication software, which can take snapshots of critical virtual machines that can then be restored if there is a failure.
Veeam’s agentless Backup and Recovery software for virtual machines helps ensure that data continuity is maintained, and larger companies should look at HP Data Protector. It is built specifically to protect virtualized servers, with comprehensive hypervisor support, and is aimed at companies with more than 1,000 employees.
But of course even if such solutions help ensure data is not lost thanks to BYOD and virtualization complexity, there’s still the issue of remote management. For that, businesses should consider an out-of-band management solution.
Out-of-band management solutions such as that offered by Opengear (News - Alert) let businesses add a secondary communication channel to remote equipment, such as cellular 3G access. It can then keep communication flowing to remote devices even in case of network outage, and often it also can serve as a conduit that enables businesses to remotely tackle issues before they disrupt continuity.
Opengear just released its ACM5004-GS out-of-band management solution, which allows businesses to take advantage of Sprint (News - Alert) Managed Network Solutions for such remote management in addition to other cellular providers.
No business can go without data these days, and a disruption to data flow is just not feasible any longer. Businesses need to have systems in place to handle BYOD, virtualization and remote management challenges.