When enterprises explore alternative backup technologies, they should ask whether it will help perform the restores faster and whether the reliability of those restores will be better from a disk media, Sloan suggested.
Determine what data you can afford to lose
Changes in US court procedures for civil suits over the last few years has driven a huge surge of interest in the efficiency of backup software, media and capacity, said Sloan.
"People realize they have to keep important documents and data for a certain retention period and they can't just blame the technology if they can't find it. So that's really been driving a lot of investment and strategizing around archiving and backup," Sloan explained.
But saving every bit of data and keeping it indefinitely isn't the answer. "Your objective is to make sure that you don't lose something that's really important, but you also can't meet that objective by just saving everything," said Sloan.
According to Sloan, a good backup and archiving strategy will answer the following questions: What is important? What needs to be kept? What can we afford not to have?
"The data loss prevention issue is more than just saying, 'We have to keep everything forever and make sure we never lose anything,'" said Sloan. "It's saying, 'Of all the stuff we have, what can we afford to lose in a disaster situation? What can we afford to delete for archiving purposes?' and then making sure the stuff that's left over is appropriately protected and backed up and archived."
Add a data recovery component to your disaster recovery plan
Including a data recovery component to your disaster recovery plan will help prevent making hasty decisions "under the gun," Riddell suggested.
"Most companies now make sure that they know what they have to do to get back and running in as little time as possible so they don't lose any money," said Riddell. "We want to ensure they have a data recovery component within that so should something happen, they can resort to their plan and know they can call a reputable company before they need them."