IBM Launches Smart Cloud for Disaster Recovery and Data Archive

ARMONK, N.Y., June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new cloud services that enable clients to protect, store and retrieve their most critical data in minutes versus days in the event of a disaster.  

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Disasters - whether from hurricanes, earthquakes or IT failures - can cause significant damage to businesses in the loss of crucial data and revenue. Analyst estimates state that the loss of revenue during downtime is tens of thousands of dollars for every hour.

Businesses need to assess threat risks and create a resilience strategy that helps ensure uninterrupted business operations and enables speed and agility when an unforeseen event strikes. The new IBM SmartCloud Resilience services allow customers to protect their data and applications faster, cheaper and in a more flexible manner than they could before within a traditional data center environment.  

Historically, companies created numerous images of servers and applications at running at multiple sites, adding to the complexity and cost of IT management. Now, the IBM SmartCloud offers companies of various sizes a virtual and physical server recovery service that continuously replicates their applications and all associated data on a secure cloud infrastructure. This enables them to have their business up and running in minutes after declaring an outage in their IT infrastructure.

By using the IBM cloud, organizations can more easily and cost effectively provide continuous service to their customers and ensure that their data and applications are protected and secure. IBM's cloud allows clients to securely manage and balance workloads, lower application and system downtime, and reduce data loss. These services help clients to avoid capital expense by more efficiently monitoring operational expenses and service levels, reducing the burden on IT staff.

"Now more than ever, companies are relying on a massive amount of data to run their businesses, storing it longer and retrieving it as needed," said Rick Ruiz, general manager of IBM's Business Continuity and Resiliency Services. "This creates a need for a business resilience strategy that will ensure continuous operation and create a competitive advantage to enable growth opportunities. Our new cloud services bring flexibility, scalability, and rapid provisioning to help accomplish that."

The new services include:

• IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery – The server recovery service increases the reliability and efficiency of recovery to help practically eliminate business downtime, and minimize data loss. Provides clients with an easy-to-use portal for remote access to rapidly bring back their business on IBM's recovery infrastructure in case of outage, replicating both server software and associated data continuously; eliminates the issues of recovery on physical non-like hardware and travel to disaster sites.

• IBM SmartCloud Archive – Designed specifically to meet stringent privacy and regulatory compliance, from advanced search and indexing and retrieval, to eDiscovery capabilities. Provides clients with an advanced document and records management system to deal with structured and unstructured content; control over rising data storage costs; and improved availability of critical business content.  

The new services complement IBM's existing SmartCloud Managed Backup offering which has been used by hundreds of clients for the past two years. The cloud-based managed backup services provide flexible, automatic management and monitoring of backup and recovery processes, including hardware, software, installation and support, and can be delivered in a public, private or hybrid cloud environment.

This service can be combined with the Archive and Virtualized services for storage, data protection and replication. Other cloud-based business continuity tools include the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for Unified Recovery (6.2), which provides disaster recovery software that can be enabled as a cloud storage option.

IBM has been working with the United States Golf Association (USGA) since 2008 on a variety of information protection services, including building a comprehensive infrastructure recovery solution.

"With new regulations like compliance and increasing security and data demands on our network, we have made it a priority to protect our data and ensure we have the right disaster recovery plan in place," said Jessica Carroll, managing director, Information Technologies, USGA. "In working with IBM on this multi-year project and tapping their business resilience and cloud expertise, we have put in place a flexible infrastructure recovery solution that ensures the availability and resiliency of our core business functions."

With more than 40 years of experience with business resilience, continuity and security, IBM uses its software, hardware and services expertise to help clients across the globe protect their data in the cloud. IBM provides organizations with various security measures to secure cloud environments, including data encryption services at IBM Resiliency Centers around the world.  By using a secure by design approach, cloud computing gives organizations more agility and access to resources, while still offering a computing model that has the potential to be more secure than traditional environments

The two new services will be available starting July 19 in certain markets. They are a part of the IBM SmartCloud portfolio, consisting of next-generation, enterprise cloud technologies and services offerings for private, public and hybrid clouds based on IBM hardware, software, services and best practices.

About IBM Cloud Computing

IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manages millions of cloud based transactions every day. IBM assists clients in areas as diverse as banking, communications, healthcare and government to build their own clouds or securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services. IBM is unique in bringing together key cloud technologies, deep process knowledge, a broad portfolio of cloud solutions, and a network of global delivery centers. For more information about IBM cloud solutions, visit www.ibm.com/smartcloud

For companies interested in determining their state of business continuity, visit The IBM Business Continuity Index: www.ibmbusinesscontinuityindex.com

For a USGA video on using cloud computing for disaster recovery, visit: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/html/videos.html

Media Contact:

Darcy Hansen
IBM Media Relations
917-472-3692
[email protected]

SOURCE IBM