Last week, ESG analyst Lauren Whitehouse wrote a very informative blog post about the challenging aspects of protecting “remote and branch office (ROBO) and remote worker (REWO) data at the “edge”.” She cited ESG research that “found that endpoint backup/recovery and remote office backup/recovery ranked in the top five of primary data protection challenges” and stated “it’s a problem area and one IT wants to fix.”

We couldn’t agree more as we hear this all the time when speaking to organizations wanting to improve their data protection strategy for remote offices and mobile workers. Whitehouse points out:

ROBO and REWO data is distributed—i.e., outside the data center.  Therefore, it boils down to strategy—do you perform local backup of data or centralize the process? Either approach gets the data backed up.  However, each introduces new issues.

After clearly outlining the pluses and minuses of trying to tackle this problem using one way or the other, she advocates “a combination of local and centralized backup/recovery” as the correct approach. Whitehouse is right on with her assessment and we’d take it a step further by saying a Cloud-Connected hybrid approach to ROBO and REWO backups and recoveries is even better.

Cloud-connected storage solutions use the power of the cloud selectively, enabling organizations to combine local and centralized technologies to protect data on the edge. With this hybrid approach, they can get the right mix of management, RTO, bandwidth utilization, and required network connectivity to keep remote office and worker data safe and secure.

As for the unique needs of REWOs, an optimized Cloud-Connected hybrid approach allows organizations to facilitate end-user recoveries and better handle dreaded network usage issues. Client-side deduplication is a must to ensure as little data as possible is sent over the wire. More importantly, a Cloud-Connected solution allows a REWO to continue backups—even if they’re offline.  A copy is stored locally, on the device.  For example, if a mobile worker is stuck on a plane (without in-flight wifi!), he/she can still backup and recover any lost data. And once on the ground and connected to the Internet, the backups will be sent off to the Cloud.

So using a Cloud-Connected hybrid approach gives organizations a needed edge in protecting remote data….

Posted by Karen Jaworski