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MCI offers disk-based backup services

02.12.2004
Von Bob Francis

MCI Inc. on Wednesday introduced a new fully managed data protection service based on disk backup designed to help companies with business continuity.

MCI?s new Enhanced Smart Backup offering allows companies hosting with MCI to rapidly restore critical company information in the event of anything from simple data loss to major disasters.

MCI already has a similar offering based on tape backup, but the new program uses disk-to-disk technology that provides faster data backup and restoration, improved data integrity, and increased scalability, said Rick Dyer, director of product management for MCI Hosting Services. "With disk you get a lot of advantages. For instance, after the initial scan, you only have to back up the unique data changes, eliminating the need to copy an entire data set after the initial scan. That can save a lot of time and improve performance," he said.

The new offering can also offer cost savings to users because Enhanced Smart Backup is priced according to customer usage, determined by the amount of actual data protected, said Dyer. "That can be a big advantage with database applications because disk-based backup can greatly reduce the volume of data that is backed up," he said.

MCI is using disk backup technology from Avamar for the new offering. Initially the new service will be available only in the United States, but MCI plans to offer it internationally next year.

MCI"s new service is an important expansion of the company"s hosting services, said Melanie Posey, an analyst at IDC. "MCI announced their strategic direction for this service back in June and now they"re executing on it. This could prove to be a nice offering for some customers out there," she said.

MCI is not the only company offering disk-to-disk data recovery. The Planet, an Internet hosting service, today announced DiscSync, a new offsite backup system for data recovery and backup. DiscSync data will be stored offsite on an EMC Corp. CX700 Clariion Storage Array with 70TB of storage. According to The Planet, it is the highest capacity EMC CX700 Clariion array ever deployed.