More stringent regulations on the retention of email and other types of data will compel companies to revisit their data retention policies and strategies in 2008—as well as focusing on tune-up measures for their disaster recovery and business continuation plans.

While many enterprises invested in and upgraded DR plans in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, many have also stopped there. In spite of this, the Aberdeen Group reported in September 2007 that 80% of best-in-class companies planned to make continuous improvement and investment in data protection over the next 18 months. These companies recognize that data protection is an ongoing task that is just as important as disaster recovery.

Data Protection versus Disaster Recovery

Data protection is integral to disaster recovery because it involves the systematic backup of data and the ability to recover data at all times, especially during disastrous interruptions that threaten business continuity.

However, it is also important to note that data protection goes beyond disaster recovery. It addresses other critical data needs—like archiving, the ability to retrieve data quickly from historical archives—and the safe and secure storage of historical data offline.

Without attention to data archiving and purging, companies are expending more resources and backing up more data than they should. These backups are also taking longer.

Recent regulatory pressures are hitting areas like data retention and archiving, especially with the growing importance of email and computer-based records in the compliance and litigation processes. Meanwhile, enterprises have major concerns when it comes to finding qualified persons on the IT staff in the areas of data protection that regulators are looking for, whether it is backup, recovery or archiving.

Adding Expertise

IT shops that look to train internal staff in the areas of data and storage management are usually challenged in finding what they want. One reason is the professional IT training market’s focus on training and certifications in network management and technical skills, database, communications, software development and Internet. Only a handful of storage vendors have responded to the dearth of storage training with their own internal programs. Beyond this; little else is available in the area of formal training.

There is a severe IT skills shortage in the data protection area. This is most evident in smaller and medium-sized companies, where individuals usually just “drawâ€