Many local companies are facing backup problems. "Data is growing very rapidly but the time available for backup is shrinking, particularly with applications running on a 24x7 basis. So a highly scalable backup solution is essential," said Li. "One of the most difficult areas for storage and backup is with file servers where the stored data can easily grow to the terabyte level but backup speeds remain comparatively slow."

A key solution is disk-to-disk backup. "Disk-based backup is one of the best hopes for near-perfect backup," said Li. "A number of years ago people were thinking LAN-free backup was the best solution but now people are thinking in terms of volume-based backup with file-based restore capability, all using disks. Server-free backup is also being adopted."

"We now do our backup disk-to-disk and backup the copy on tape. Previously, we were online during daytime and batched the backup at night," said Hickerson, "Now, customers using online systems expect 24x7 access, so we have 24x7 hours working, there is no opportunity to use direct tape backup."

2007 offsite backup encryption

In a January 2006 report, Gartner analyst Adam Couture found that concern over theft or loss of archive tapes is changing users' behavior. "50 percent of high-end respondents say they will encrypt all backup tapes and 58 percent will review their internal backup security policies." The same survey reported that an 'alarming 60 percent' of low-end respondents and 80 percent of high-end respondents continue to back up data to a local device.