Hosted Voice over IP (VoIP) and PBX: Vocalocity Review

Over the last couple years more and more small and medium businesses (SMBs) have been considering new answers to the question: "how do I get enterprise-class telecommunications on a SMB budget?"

Highly reliable, low-cost telecommunications services like T1's and fiber have combined with hosted "cloud" services and advances in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) digital phone systems.  The result is hosted PBX services in the cloud.  Over the last couple years I went looking for hosted PBX options for a couple of clients and after considering several competitors we selected Vocalocity.

Voice Over IP (VoIP) - Image via Wikipedia

Vocalocity made sign-up and set-up a breeze.  As a reseller we walked through a well documented process to get our clients up and running.  We went through a quoting process where the final quote and pricing was evaluated and then approved by the sales team at Vocalocity.  With a quote, credit card, and a few approval documents (for number porting and such) signed Vocalocity had the account created within a day and had scheduled the number port from the existing Internet Service Provider (ISP) within a week.

Set up of the service was relatively quick and easy.  All of the expected features where there, at least those you would expect from a hosted system.  Even before the phones arrived we could go in and set up users, call groups, and voice mails.  Unlike some competitors we were allowed to select any SIP phone we liked although they would only guarantee support on some of the more popular models.  All the same, they had a great selection of quality, affordable phones available.

By the time we had phones to hook up we were ready to test the service.  I highly recommend testing the service (any service, not just Vocalocity) for a a few days before you port your numbers.  This gives you time to train your employees on the new system and work out wrinkles with regards to business process and functionality.

There were really not very many features that you expect from on premise systems that weren't included, but everything was an additional cost.  At times I felt like I was being nickel and dimed even though the actual total cost was very reasonable.  Vocalocity could do some simplification and bundle more of their features in a base service to fix this although they may have to keep them a la carte to compete with the marketing of competitors.

There was some training, although it wasn't extensive.  As a partner we had dug in to the documentation and training videos ourselves and then provided training to our clients rather than just entrusting them to Vocalocity's resources.  It can be very beneficial to work with a partner that has performed Vocalocity installations and migrations before for first time clients.  Maybe this has changed, but it would have been nice to have more personal training, not just documentation and web videos.

We used many of their features and found some we were missing and really wanted.  Specifically, we were looking for the ability to select from multiple outbound caller ids for different phones on the system.  We told their partner and support departments how important that feature was (along with several others) and were pleasantly surprised when they deployed those same features within a few months.

Support was good.  The phone team all spoke English as a first language and were available when we needed them without excessive hold times.  The documentation was good as well.  The only caution I have here is that since Vocalocity doesn't work directly with your ISP and doesn't qualify line quality you may have mixed results with regards to reliability and call quality.  Some competitors get around this by requiring you to purchase your internet connection through them... which has both positive and negative facets.  Personally I preferred having full control over the ISP service.

I did hear a couple complaints from one client about billing issues.  This was about the same time that Vocalocity hired a whole bunch new people and revamped several business processes.  I have a feeling that they just got behind with the huge growth in their business.  That doesn't excuse dropping the ball though.  I understand this has gotten better as they developed their new team.

On the whole I was happy with the choice to use Vocalocity and I would recommend them to small and medium businesses looking to move their voicemail/PBX system to the cloud... but only IF they have high-quality, reliable internet service.

Have you used Vocalocity?  What was your experience like?

Related articles

• Vocalocity vs. AT&T (quitecloudy.com)
• PR Resources: Vocalocity Gives SMEs Competitive Advantage (pamil-visions.net)
• A Better Telecommuting Option for Small-Business Workers (esbjournal.com)

11 Ways Businesses Waste Their IT Investments

Here's a quick list of the top 11 ways I've found that SMBs misuse their Information Technology and waste their money:

11. Put your "server room" in the women's restroom. (Yes... I saw this at one small business)
10. Wait until your new hire shows up to call the IT guy and notify him you need a computer, network jack and cell phone.
9. When your printer dies go to Best Buy and pick a new one up without consulting your IT department first.
8. "Plan" for your servers to last 5 years or longer.
7. Always choose the value (cheap) option.
6. Treat your IT department like they're overhead that detracts from profit rather than an enabler for productivity and revenue generation.
5. Don't consider business continuity and disaster recovery - a little downtime never hurt anyone!
4. Build it and they will come.  Install a system for a need that doesn't exist yet and that nobody wants because it has "great features."
3. Don't provide ongoing technical training to your IT department.
2. Don't bother budgeting for equipment replacement and IT support.
1. Wait until your equipment breaks to fix it instead of monitoring, preventively maintaining, and replacing it on a regular basis.

So, if your small or medium business has fallen victim to one or more of these what should you do?  Think first, plan for growth & failures, treat IT as a valuable asset rather than a money sink, find a good trusted advisor (CIO/CTO/consultant) and USE them.  It's their job to think about this stuff.  If you need help finding a good consultant, just talk to other local business owners about who they use and interview three or four (or more!) before making your decision.

The Small & Medium Business Case for Office 365

The Small & Medium Business Case for Office 365 - An Evaluation of Microsoft's Cloud E-mail and Collaboration Services
For some background on Office 365 see my previous post http://blog.redwoodnetworks.com/2011/04/what-makes-sense-in-cloud-today.html.  I'll assume that everyone is passing familiar with hosted e-mail and collaboration services for the purposes of this article though.

Like Punxsutawney Phil, the economy saw its shadow in 2010 and returned to its hole for another 6 weeks (months) of winter.  Spring is here now, though.  Businesses are spending money and hiring again and they've learned a few things.  First of all, they're a little more cautious... especially with regards to technology and purchasing systems that require a great deal of ongoing maintenance.  They continue to be interested in new ways of doing more with less.  What's new, though, is that they are willing to take some calculated risks, give some new ideas a try.

I'm going to make some generalizations about businesses... see if any of this sounds like your business:

1. You have limited capital assets to invest on computer technology, software and services.
2. You need to keep up with technology trends within reason... to keep in line with vendors, partners, clients, etc.
3. You require solutions that are reliable, business tested, and easy to manage.
4. You have one or more in house computer servers now providing e-mail and collaboration services.
5. Your organization includes several people that require the ability to not only send e-mail but to collaborate with each other and external users efficiently.
6. You've delayed renewing your systems for the last couple years due to the recession but you just can't wait any more. Your systems are aging and it's just time to upgrade.

Does any of this sound familiar?  If so, this is a great time for you to evaluate some of the maturing solutions for hosted e-mail and collaboration services.  Small and medium-sized business have had it hammered in to their heads over the last 10 years that they can now do all the things that large businesses can do with technology:  they can have their own e-mail; they can have web portals, not just plain old websites; they can host web training and deliver presentations to hundreds remotely; they can have instant messaging and unified communications systems that deliver voicemail messages to their e-mail inboxes.

There's a problem though.  All of these solutions require a LOT of maintenance.  And experts to maintain them.  Not to mention that the solutions themselves are not cheap.  They're much more affordable than they used to be, but it's still hard to part with capital.  Didn't we just have a recession?  And are we really SURE it's done?  How can businesses take advantage of all of these technologies that extend productivity and give critical advantages over competition... but do it without the large investments and risky baggage they come with?

Well, they're in luck.  If you really have been hiding in a hole for the last 3 or 4 years you've missed a revolution in computer technology.  It's called Cloud Computing and Microsoft is there in spades with their new Office 365 product.  When I say new though, don't get the wrong idea.  This is not a version 1 product.  Hosted e-mail and collaboration services have been around for several years now.

Back to the business case for Office 365 then.  Let's talk about some of the reasons why businesses have NOT been moving in droves to hosted cloud services up to now.

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Road Block #1: The Solutions are Just Not Mature.
Your business cannot depend on a hosted service you cannot control.  Hosted solutions aren't reliable and are probably not secure.  Also, the service level agreements are not sufficient and they're just not ready for prime time.

What's Changed?
Microsoft deployed its first hosted Exchange e-mail service (the 1.0 product) in 2002, re-released it in 2006 (Exchange Hosted Services - the 2.0 product) and expanded it to include the collaboration product Sharepoint 2007 (Exchange and Sharepoint Online - the 3.0 product), finally reaching the current product - Business Productivity Online Services (or BPOS - the 4.0 product) in November 2008.  Office 365 is expected to release fully in the US around mid-year 2011.

So, if you look at the full history of hosted Microsoft online services, Office 365 is most definitely NOT a version 1 or even version 2 product. It's a mature and well-thought-out suite of services with offerings that are appealing to a broad range of business types and sizes. With everyone's concern (often for good reason) over trying version 1 products it's important to understand just how mature hosted "cloud" services have become over the last 5 years.

Road Block #2: Access to Adequate Internet Connections
Up until recently, many small businesses struggled with obtaining reliable and speedy internet service.  This kept them from considering hosted solutions because of the perceived low quality of those services.

What's Changed?
With the expansion of cable companies in to the business space and the resulting innovation by the phone companies, small businesses now have extraordinary options for high-speed, reliable internet services.  T1?  Old news.  Got fiber?  No?  Check it out.

Road Block #3: Didn't We Buy that Last Year?
Pre-existing investments by medium-sized businesses in some of the very technologies being moved to the cloud have kept them from fully investigating outsourcing those services.  There's a lot of infrastructure that was purchased to enable some of these solutions and you can't just throw it away!

Microsoft Office Communications (OCS) server and Sharepoint have both experienced a renaissance in medium businesses over the last 5 years.  Integration of phone systems with OCSSharepoint has become a major productivity tool on par with e-mail in many offices.

What's Changed?
Many of these investments are now aging.  Staff has been downsized during the recession.  Businesses want to keep these capabilities but do it with less staff and capital investment in infrastructure that needs refreshing every three to five years.  The online solutions have matured and now offer many if not all of the same features as their more traditional cousins.  If it's time for a tech refresh, it's time for an online services evaluation!
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So, with most of the major road blocks removed, why haven't businesses been moving to the cloud in droves?  Expertise.  The industry requires a new generation of consultants and engineers that specialize in Cloud Infrastructure Services.  They're coming, believe me.  Those who see the writing on the wall are already well in to delivering these services to their clients, but full penetration will take some time yet.  There is a fundamental shift in how Information Technology is delivered.  Microsoft calls it "Software Plus Services."  You won't see onsite computer servers, software and services disappear from businesses entirely, at least not for a long while.  But, the slow movement of services to the cloud has begun and will only accelerate.

Back to the business case again then.  You can now:

• Pay for your e-mail, collaboration portal, instant messaging, and meeting/web conferencing solutions via a monthly subscription that is a true expense and saves you from calculating depreciation of assets.
• Obtain all of these services without a major capital investment.
• Bring capabilities that only large enterprises previously had available to small and medium businesses quickly and easily.
• Future-proof your technology - don't invest in new technology that will be obsolete again within 5 years.  These services include all upgrades - performed invisibly in the background and without major interruptions (mostly) in service.
• Access services from anywhere - it's incredibly easy now to open a new office.  Who cares about connecting to the servers in your old office, it's all hosted online!
• Access more and better solutions - the rate of development for new applications, services and solutions on the web is much faster than the traditional model.  A company can create a product and have it deployed to customers overnight now.  React faster with more relevant solutions than ever before.
• Right-size your solutions.  Need more seats?  Add them and they're available within minutes.  Downsize?  Remove some seats and pay less next month.  This is an absolute revelation to seasonal businesses.

How much does all this cost?  An arm and a leg, right?  Not at all!  The entry level product with 99.9% guaranteed uptime and limited support is available for only $6 per user per month.  For larger businesses with more substantial needs or those with higher SLA requirements there are solutions that range in price up to $27 per user per month.  The upper-level options also include a license of Microsoft Office Professional Plus for each user.  This is yet another way to move a capital expenditure in to the expense category.

So, while not every "cloud" offering is worth evaluating, the Microsoft Office 365 services coming to market in the next several months are mature services worth a hard look by small and medium-sized businesses.  Cloud services are ready and they're here.  You should be actively looking at them and figuring out how they will change your business.  You can be sure that your competitors are.

Credit for the history of Office 365 goes to Zdnet's Mary Jo Foley's blog: The road to Microsoft Office 365: The past.

Reasons to keep your servers out of the Cloud

I just read about a service "Doyenz ShadowCloud" that talks about taking a virtual copy of your onsite Windows Small Business Server each day and putting it in the "cloud." From there you can use it as a backup in case your server goes down. It looks like you might just be able to run from it in the cloud also.

While services like this are becoming more popular I reserve my judgment as to whether they're really a good idea or not for anything but the backup. I think it's a good idea to have a backup and even to having a backup server hosted offsite you could use temporarily. But as to whether you'd want to use one as your primary server or not I just don't think so... at least not yet.

There will always be a blend of onsite and offsite IT services for my clients. As internet access to offsite services gets better, clients will use more and more of them. But, at least for now, I can think of a lot of good reasons to KEEP YOUR SERVERS.

Here they are:
1. Performance - accessing your data over a remote connection is just SLOWER. There are expensive technologies that promise to accelerate access to applications hosted remotely, but they're really out of reach for small businesses for the most part.
2. Ease of Use - when you connect to a remotely hosted service often you need to start a VPN. A VPN is an encrypted data connection between your computer and the server. This is necessary so that your data isn't easily available to everyone on the internet and ensures that only those that should have access are able to connect to your server. The downside is that A. You have to "connect" the VPN by clicking a button and typing in a username and password; and B. Your data is encrypted and decrypted at each end... causing a delay in accessing your data and making for a slower user experience (see #1, above).
3. Control/security - if you have a server in your office you can put it in a locked room or closet and know that the only way someone can get to it (physically) is if they open that door. While we are told that hosted systems in the cloud have big datacenter security, you generally don't know who is accessing your system and you may not even really know where it is. Theoretically it's unnecessary to know where your stuff is, but I'm a little old fashioned in that way I guess. I'd at least like a COPY of my stuff just in case something happens to that datacenter I've never actually visited in person.
4. Flexibility - when you put your systems in the cloud you generally lose the ability to customize the software on them. You also lose some physical things like the ability to hook up a hardware access/license key dongle if you have an application that requires one.

So, there are lots of reasons to keep your servers. In most cases, I'm going to recommend that my clients don't move 100% in to the cloud. It's just not ready. But, in some very specific instances it makes a lot of sense. And having some of your services in the cloud now is all but inevitable.

Next time I'll talk about when I *do* recommend businesses move to the cloud and for what parts of their Information Technology.

Reasons to Keep Your Servers

Next up... with all the great reasons to move in to the cloud, why would anyone want to host their own server any more?

Stay tuned...

Why Move to the Cloud?

The primary reason most companies move operations in to the cloud is... MONEY.

In the traditional way, a company needing a new e-mail server would:
1. Buy a new server ($3,000 - a relatively inexpensive one)
2. Buy an operating system and the e-mail software ($2,000 - Windows Server & Exchange)
3. Pay employees or consultant (15 hours or around $2,000) to install the whole thing

That's a capital outlay of $7,000. It's likely that server will need over the course of a 4 year lifespan:
1. $2,000+ in electricity and cooling
2. Hardware and software labor services up to 4x the cost of the server (say $6,000)
3. Hardware upgrades and replacement ($500 for misc components probably after 3-year warranty expires)

If you consider the total cost of owning that server over the course of 4 years then, the total is $15,500 for one single server.

Let's just say that e-mail server was going to host 30 e-mail mailboxes and do nothing else. You can purchase as a service in the cloud the very same e-mail solution for $10 per month per user. For 30 users thats $300 per month or $3,600 per year or $14,400 for 4 years.

You just saved over $1,000. You'll probably get more for your money too. Consider that:
1. Your server will be hosted in a Tier 1 data center with redundant power systems. It'll most likely be up more when hosted than if you keep it onsite.
2. They'll provide backups which might cost you $1,000 or more to just purchase software for, let alone maintaining the system for 4 years.
3. You'll get highly trained engineers that are pros at keeping servers running 24/7 and that's all they do. This will include monitoring of systems, patch management, etc.
4. You have a monthly expense rather than a capital outlay. That means you get to deduct the business expense on taxes rather than tracking depreciation.
5. The service will always be on the latest version of the software. No upgrades for you to manage.
6. You can add more mailboxes as needed and remove them when you don't need them. Never pay for more than you need.

Rinse and repeat. Every four years you save your $1,000+ when you continue to use the cloud rather than buy a new server.

What is Cloud Computing?

Let's start with a definition from Wikipedia:

"Cloud Computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like a public utility."

Now I'll break it down into something a little easier to wrap your brain around:
Any computing service you use that doesn't live on a traditional computer server in your office is probably "Cloud Computing."

Many companies use an e-mail filtering service that removes spam and viruses before delivering that e-mail to employee inboxes. That's cloud computing.

Some companies now send a copy of their data backups to the internet for offsite storage. That's cloud computing.

A recent popular example of cloud computing is Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management (CRM) application you access through a web browser. You could also consider Facebook a cloud computing application.

There are a couple different levels of cloud computing:
1. Applications (Facebook, Salesforce, Hotmail, etc.)
2. Platforms (places for people to build applications and not put them on their own servers)
3. Infrastructure (replacing or augmenting your own servers or networking equipment with some in the cloud)

For the purpose of this discussion we'll really just concentrate on applications and infrastrcture. We'll let people who do computer programming worry about the platforms for now.

The "Cloud" and Your Business

What is the "Cloud" and how will it affect your business? You may be using the cloud right now and just not know it. What's available, what's good and what are your peers doing?

In this series of posts I'll be starting off with some general information on the "Cloud" and how Redwood's clients are using it now. We'll move on to where I (and the industry) see it going in the next couple years. If you're not already using something in the cloud now I'd be surprised and you'll be doing a lot more there very soon!

Vocalocity vs. AT&T

Well, we've been officially set up as a Vocalocity Certified Reseller. After Karl Palachuk's recommendation on Cloud Computing Part Three - Moving to The Cloud we decided to take a long look at Vocalocity as an alternative to our current telecom (AT&T) solution.

Here are a couple situations where we think a hosted PBX might be a good solution for our clients:

1. They want capabilities not available on their legacy system
2. They don't have capital to invest in a new installed system
3. They have multiple offices
4. Remote teleworkers need to interact with the office as if they were onsite.

Our telecom costs look like this:

Grasshopper (another "hosted" PBX service) $25
AT&T local phone, long distance $75
eFax service $17
Total $117

(Note that we're a telecommuting company... there's only one phone line to the office and everyone uses Sprint $99 Simply Everything plans on their cell phones for work. We don't need anything else with a hosted helpdesk and answering service.)

When I plug my requirements in to the nifty Excel spreadsheet provided by Vocalocity I find that I can have: 1 full extension (metered), 2 virtual extensions for cell phones, the default local company number and auto attendant, a virtual mailbox, 3 call groups (sales, tech support, emergency support), and unlimited US faxing for about the same cost. It will cost me $10 more per month to go to the AT&T internet plan without local phone service.

So, for about $10 more per month I get a full fledged IP PBX (hosted) that integrates with my Outlook (something I don't get now), that can grow with my company and that I can now demo for the clients that I think would benefit from the service. Of course, that's the real reason I'm looking at Vocalocity. I get a portion of the monthly recurring billings for all the clients I sign up.

For a company that really hasn't even tested the VoIP phone waters yet, we're doing our best to identify solutions that will allow us to serve our client's needs and keep as much of their revenue within our control as we can. I'm not sure how hosted IP PBX's compare to in-house systems in larger customers, so we may need to look for additional vendors in the medium and enterprise markets... not that we're looking for VoIP phone work in that space anyway.

Helpdesk Challenges

How does a small MSP without a large staff do helpdesk, scheduling and answer the phones?

This is one of our major challenges right now. We currently forward our local phone line to a hosted PBX (via an 800 number) that then forwards to either my tech or myself depending upon which department (1 for sales, 2 for tech support, etc.) or which extension they choose. It has follow-me features so that it rings my cell phone first and then the tech for some things and my home phone for other things. It's a great service (http://grasshopper.com/) but I'm the operator. Not a very efficient use of my time.

So, I'm looking for alternatives. I started looking in to a plain answering service, but it seems to me that if someone is going to answer the phones I want them to be able to do scheduling for techs and interact with my ticketing system to enter new tickets and forward people to the helpdesk. It might be useful to have them do personal assistant stuff as well. So if a tech is in the field and cannot get to the ticketing system, they could call this person and update a ticket over the phone.

There's lots of other reasons to have a "power answering service" too. Of course this really points to hiring someone to sit in an office all day. That's what companies have done in the past. I don't want to do that. We do have an office, but it's really just a place for our back-end systems to sit and for me to work outside the home when I'm not onsite at a client. I don't want to put more warm bodies in an office. I don't remember who it was, maybe Amy Luby, that was talking about telecommuting all their people. I think this is a great idea. Get together once a week for a staff meeting and then let everyone work from home.

The solutions I've come up with so far are either expensive or lacking. I've looked in to virtual assistants, but I hesitate to engage with one without a recommendation. I've asked my MSPU mentor for recommendations but they haven't come up with anything yet. I've looked on the web, but it's impossible to tell who's good and not. I guess I could start interviewing them like I would an employee. Any recommendations here?

I've thought about talking to Synergy about doing helpdesk for ALL of my clients rather than just the one on my all-you-can-eat MSP offering. I'm not sure if they'd do that or not. They're not really an answering service and I can't imagine they'd do the non-helpdesk stuff.

Today I've been looking at automated call centers. I found AnswerNet and they say they can do what I need for $250 to set up and then $205/mo for 250 minutes of "operator" time. I'm also going to contact Successful Office and maybe XACT Telesolutions to see what they offer. I'd pay up to $300 a month for this type of service I think. The real question is how good a job will they do. It'd also be nice to have the other functions of a all center at my disposal... to do appointment call downs the day before and customer satisfaction calls the day after and such. We'll see.

So, other options... get a part time person to work from home? Maybe an intern from the local community college? If I need someone just for a few minutes here and there but 8x5 I don't see that working well.

How do other small businesses handle this? Give me your input.

Disaster Recovery Methods

After reading Karl Palachuk’s blog today – The Reality of Offsite Backup – I thought maybe the discussion could be expanded to include some best practices for disaster recovery. I’ll start off with some of what we’re doing for our clients and I look forward to seeing what kind of comments we get.

So, see if you can guess which technologies are used for the three “backup & disaster recovery” options below. By the way, I know there are many more ways to provide this service. These three solutions seem to be prevalent in our area though.

Option A – Standard file-based backup solution with regular offsite storage of media:

1. Execute disaster recovery steps to call everyone and initiate access to an alternate worksite if necessary. 4 hours
2. Replace any lost/damaged equipment. 2-4 business days minimum depending on requirements and vendors.
3. Bring offsite media to recovery location. 2-4 hours
4. Reinstall operating system on replacement equipment. 2-4 hours
5. Restore of the offsite data to the replaced/fixed equipment. 2-4 hours

Access to recovery systems: 3-5 days
Total disaster recovery time: 3-5 days

Option B – Offsite image replication without local recovery equipment:

1. Execute disaster recovery steps to call everyone and initiate access to an alternate worksite if necessary. 4 hours
2. Replace any lost/damaged equipment. 2-4 business days minimum depending on requirements and vendors.
3. Request for offsite data to be shipped to recovery location on BDR appliance. 24-48 hours
4. Virtualize failed server until permanent recovery equipment is available. 1 hour
   
5. (After Hours) Restore of the offsite data to the replaced/fixed equipment. 2-4 hours
   

Access to recovery systems: 2-3 days
Total disaster recovery time: 3-5 days

Option C – Offsite replication with offsite mount of image as virtual machine and RDP access:

1. Execute disaster recovery steps to call everyone and initiate access to an alternate worksite if necessary. 4 hours
2. Initiate offsite backup image mount on a hosted virtual machine. Provide RDP access to systems as necessary either in existing location or an alternate disaster recovery site. 1-2 hours
   
3. Replace or fix any lost/damaged equipment with local parts, rental servers or cold spares. 2-4 hours
   
4. Request for offsite data to be shipped to recovery location on BDR appliance. 24-48 hours
5. (After Hours) Take remote virtual machine offline and allow BDR appliance to replicate deltas. 2-4 hours
   
6. (After Hours) Restore of the offsite data to the replaced/fixed equipment. 2-4 hours

Access to recovery systems: 4-6 hours
Total disaster recovery time: 3-5 days

Option A uses BackupExec (or similar) with a rotation of weekly offsite drives. Since you’re not doing a CDP you’ll be losing any data since your last offsite transfer. How critical is that data? It would be better to take media offsite daily, but you’re still losing a lot of data in a disaster potentially. Besides busy clients don’t like to mess with tapes or USB drives every day and you end up with missed backups as a result.

Option B is the standard Zenith BDR solution. It’s better than “we’ll back up the most critical 24 GB of data” but has some drawbacks. The first is the amount of time it takes to get replacement equipment. The second is the loss of control over offsite data.

We’ve learned that Option C is better and doesn’t require much more investment. Option C could be a Datto Viridian solution if you don’t have your own offsite hosting facility. If you have somewhere to replicate data to over the internet you might choose a Zenith Arca or SonicWall CDP solution. The trick with Option C is providing immediate access to systems via mounting the backup images. Of course good internet connectivity is required for the RDP to work. This is relatively new technology and you’ll find Sun Virtualbox in this space among others.

In addition, you need to consider whether you'll have personnel available to perform critical functions, where you're going to put them, access to critical services (phone, fax, internet, etc.) in the recovery location and a slew of other items.

It rapidly gets complicated so you absolutely have to plan it out, develop a solution and not just slap together a few technologies and hope it works.

So, how are you doing disaster recovery? Are you providing DR consulting in addition to data backup & recovery? Do you do the DR consulting yourself or outsource it? Do you have a better backup option than we’ve discussed? Maybe you just have comments on one of the technologies I mention.

Let us know your thoughts!

Scott Cameron
Redwood Network Services, Inc.
www.redwoodnetworks.com