Uniq Systems Ltd

Many years ago I stopped trusting audio cassettes and moved my music collection to CD after noticing that if I left an audio tape on the car dashboard the sound deteriorated. Cassettes also had a habit of getting chewed up and broken in the tape drives resulting in me having to borrow my mum’s nail polish to stick the ends together. Why I used nail polish I don’t know but I am sure I read it somewhere.

I then transferred all my home movies to DVD and also copied them on to a huge hard drive for belts and braces, again because VHS tapes looked and felt so antiquated.

Finally I copy all my digital photos on to a huge hard drive and also put a copy on Microsoft Live Mesh. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Microsoft Live Mesh it is a free Cloud based storage service (Yes I know the word Microsoft and Free are rarely found in the same sentence!). Not only does Live Mesh store your files in the Cloud but it also synchronises the files between all the computers in your “Mesh” i.e. Your XP home computer, your Vista laptop, your Apple iBook etc will have a copy of the same files which are updated automatically if they change.

So the question is, if I am so worried about my music, my home videos and my pictures why do I walk home everyday with a tape in my back pocket with all my company data on it? If I were to loose my music and videos I would be upset and would probably be forced to live the rest of my life in the doghouse, I would still have a job as would people who work with me. On the other hand loosing the company data is just unthinkable! I am pretty sure as a company we wouldn't survive which would effect our suppliers and would also hurt our customers that depend on us for various services. 

Mostly the tape stays in my glove compartment, sometimes if I remember I will take it home and put it on my desk. If I am unlucky enough to loose my server room and have my car stolen at the same time then I am in real trouble! Even if I do have the tape I will probably find that I can’t get a replacement tape drive to read it because it is so old, or the drive won’t read the tape due to CRC or media errors, or somebody forgot to put the tape in the drive the night before so the files are the wrong version and so on. Sometimes I think the backup system is so temperamental it just fails due to the position of the moon that night.

A lot of you are probably hurling abuse at me right now asking if they are so unreliable then why have we been recommending and installing them to date? Well the simple answer is that there has never been a suitable alternative, many manufactures came up with so called ground breaking technologies involving hard drives and other media but anything with moving parts is a definite no no for taking off site no matter how rugged and shock proof it claims to be.

Then came the Cloud based storage providers shouting “Hey, the Cloud is the best thing since sliced bread. Store all your data here in exchange for peanuts”. I am a big fan of the Cloud but until internet speeds approach Ethernet speeds I would be reluctant to have the Cloud as my only Backup source, for instance it could take me days to download a full Exchange message store.

So how can we have a simple integrated backup solution which store data locally but can also leverage the robustness and the claimed 100% availability of the Cloud to fall back on in the case of a disaster? A solution that doesn’t rely on technology that was around before I was born and doesn’t rely on me having to take the tape home in a fire proof briefcase, handcuffed to my wrist and then stored in an underground  fireproof, bomb proof and lazy IT admin proof bunker.

Well that solution will be launched here in the UK on the 14^th of October so you will have to wait till then to find out!!