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Staples to Unify Data Storage as a Service |
itbusinessedge.com
By Michael Vizard
October 13, 2010 – The problem with backup and recovery, archiving and disaster recovery is that they are all treated like separate activities. As a result, usually none of them is done particularly well and inevitably one or two of them is underfunded.
Staples wants to change that with the launch of ThriveSafe and ThriveSave offerings that harness managed services provided by Axcient to deliver a unified approach to backup and recovery, archiving and disaster recovery.
Staples wants to change that with the launch of ThriveSafe and ThriveSave offerings that harness managed services provided by Axcient to deliver a unified approach to backup and recovery, archiving and disaster recovery.
According to Jim Lippie, president of the Thrive Networks, the IT network services arm of Staples Advantage, Staples has been watching customers struggle with backup and recovery issues for years. By partnering with Axcient, Staples can offer an appliance that offloads all of these storage-management functions to a cloud computing service managed by Staples.
The argument that Lippie is trying to make is that internal IT people have better things to do than manage secondary and tertiary storage.
Backup and recovery, archiving and disaster recovery are the IT equivalent of trimming the hedges; nobody really wants to do it so they wind up doing it poorly. After awhile, people get sick enough of doing it badly that they call in a professional. When it comes to storage management, the folks at Staples are hoping that call will go to them because backup and recovery, archiving and disaster recovery are now all variations of the same storage service.
Staples, of course, is now one of a small army of vendors that offer some form of storage as a service. But no matter what route you choose, when it comes to secondary and tertiary storage, doing it yourself in this day and age really is more trouble than it's worth.