A number of factors contribute to the time savings, such as improved speed of the disk-based system and the ability to run all system backups simultaneously (tape backups were constrained by the number of drives available). The most significant factor, McCown says, is the way the system works; a full backup only physically backs up files that have changed, compressing and combining them with the unchanged files. In addition, Situs uses WAN optimization to reduce the amount of data traveling over the network.

"We can actually get a full backup taken in a night now where it used to take a weekend," McCown says. For the most part, Situs has eliminated tape (except for software images), and recovery times have improved significantly. Situs can now recover most data within minutes, when previously it may have taken one or two days to get a tape back for recovery or cost $500 to get an emergency tape pulled from offsite.

With backup in the cloud, the IT group can focus on day-to-day internal operations without having to worry about backup and recovery. The employee who spent the bulk of his time on routine backup duties such as verifying backups, handling tapes and running jobs, is now doing higher-level network engineering work. Among the company's 13 IT staffers, backup-related tasks only require about 20 minutes of their attention daily.

While initial staff have been allayed, McCown does offer an HR-related caveat. "We still have to understand the technology and know how to use it effectively," he says. While the IT staff was trained, McCown says he would have done a better job setting expectations so internal staff wouldn't think they no longer have to bother with storage duties at all.

"Backup is out in the cloud, but my team still has to spend time every day with the system and know how to do recovery via a console," he says.