Protecting Data at the Edge with Simpana® Software

Despite years of marketing from numerous backup companies, much of the data stored at the edge of IT environments on business PCs, like desktops, laptops and workstations, is still not being backed-up regularly, reliably, or in a secure fashion. Companies continue to be burdened with significant compliance and productivity risks. Recent research from Enterprise Strategy Group reveals that endpoint devices, including desktop and laptop PCs, are often under-protected. According to the research report, Endpoint Device Backup Trends, "less than half (49%) of organizations back up all of their desktop PCs and only 38% do so for laptops. At the other end of the spectrum, 11% of respondents said that less than 25% of desktops are protected or they have no data protection process at all, and 12% of their laptops fall into the same category."

The Business Challenge

Desktop and laptop computers often hold data that is subject to stringent security and compliance requirements. With tremendous mobility and data growth, it’s easy to understand why protecting this data at the edge can be difficult to manage cost effectively. Legacy protection approaches increasingly fall short due to network, security, and usability constraints and slow, resource-intensive end-user data restoration.

The Simpana® Software Edge Data Protection Solution

The Simpana® software Edge Data Protection solution meets these challenges head-on with robust features that reliably protect data, improve data availability, simplify management, and reduce costs, while exceeding most requirements for security and compliance.

  • Single-Platform Data Management – Simpana software reduces complexity with a single platform for all backup, recovery, and archive management, with consolidated reporting, security controls and auditing. Compliance archive, search, and eDiscovery options significantly improve data availability.
  • Improve Resource Utilization – Protecting edge data can be challenging because of WAN limitations and end-user constraints. Source-side deduplication technology, coupled with intelligent backup scheduling and bandwidth throttling, dramatically improves the ability to protect distributed data with existing network resources.
  • Reduce Management Costs – Administrators can deploy, setup, and manage large-scale distributed data environments more easily than ever. New installation policies automate silent deployment and installation.
  • Restore End-user Data Quickly – Administrators can easily provide full system restores using centrally-located backup data. End-users can find and restore files from any backup on any client they are authorized to access.
  • Transfer Data Securely – A VPN is not required for secure data transport when using the Simpana Edge Data Protection solution. Full encryption at all stages and HTTPS can be used together instead of a VPN for strong security that is cost effective and easy to manage.

Compliance Archive for Edge Data

In today’s mobile work environments, it is likely that desktops and laptops may hold up to 50% of a corporation’s information assets. Consequently, they have become a primary target for legal and compliance investigations. Corporations need a defensible and automated solution to identify, collect, preserve, and review all relevant data sources—including information stored at the edge. The Simpana Edge Data Protection solution was designed with these challenges in mind, giving every client agent the option for storage reporting and content indexing. It ensures you can preserve, protect, and access business critical information on desktops and laptops whenever necessary to meet any eDiscovery or compliance challenge.

 

Reduce Storage and Network Requirements with Source Side Dedupe

  • Eliminate 90 percent of redundant data at the source with little impact to the end-user.
  • Cut your backup window and deal with rampant data growth using existing infrastructure.
  • Be as efficient as possible with common dedupe, common codebase, and common management interface no matter what Simpana software features you choose to license.

Improve Manageability with Intelligent Software

  • Auto discover new desktops and laptops; install backup agents automatically to reduce administrative workload.
  • Intelligent backup scheduling and bandwidth throttling that adjusts continually for the system environment in order to improve the user experience and reduce support calls.
  • Scale higher and farther using a smaller, more nimble backup infrastructure.
  • Support broad ranging environments of mixed operating systems, including the latest versions of Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Give End-users More Control With a Web Console

  • Backup administrators determine and enable global user policies, rights, and security associations.
  • End-users may refine, monitor, and manage their local protection activities according to the global policies set by the administrator.
  • End-users may restore data wherever, whenever necessary.

Effective Security, Standard

  • Companies can be confident that data is secure at rest or in flight even without a VPN. The Edge Data Protection solution provides full encryption and HTTPS for strong security that is cost effective and easy to manage.
  • Users can manage only those PCs where they are a named “owner”.

Future Proof Your Solution Automatically

  • The Content Index connector future proofs companies for compliance archiving. They can simply update their license to begin the collection and discovery of all ESI located on desktops and laptops.
  • Simplify management and reduce costs with consolidated reporting, security and auditing of all enterprise data from data center to endpoint.

Extend Protection and Cost Savings to The Cloud

  • Backup and recover desktop, laptop, and remote office data directly with cloud-based storage.
  • Virtually unlimited storage capacity with our integrated cloud storage partners helps users dramatically reduce costs and operational complexity while improving long-term compliance.

Simplify Licensing Based on Production Data Capacity

  • Customers can elect to license based on the traditional agents/ options methodology or according to the amount of total front-end data being protected (Capacity Licensing Agreements, "CLA").
  • By design, the CLA has fewer SKUs and is simple to manage & monitor.
  • Pay in proportion to front-end data being protected, no matter the number of PCs or how frequently they change.
  • Users always have access to their data for restore, recovery, or administrative tasks.

Manage Efficiently with Insightful Reporting

  • Managing storage resources is a critical yet challenging job for any organization, because these resources are distributed across the network and thousands of devices. The advanced reporting capabilities of Simpana 9 enable administrators to easily and effectively select, view, and analyze important operational data.
  • Assess used and free storage space for improved capacity planning.
  • Track storage utilization trends and anticipate future resource needs.
  • Apply file level analytics that detail: type, size, volume and directory location as well as client source.
 

Let’s face it. The data at the edge of IT environments is not being protected properly. Some large enterprises place responsibility for desktop/laptop backup directly on the shoulders of each employee. CommVault improves how data on workstations, desktops and laptops is protected. Simpana® 9 software enables customers to apply robust, reliable, data protection to their data at the edge in the same way they backup and recover their file servers; easily, securely, and cost effectively.

Let’s look at a few of the more common situations for considering the Simpana Edge Data Protection solution.

Mobile Workforce

Laptops are standard issue for many employees, particularly Sales, Marketing, Management, and home-office-based employees who rely on laptops to be productive. However, their data networks and unique computing requirements often prove problematic for hassle-free, reliable protection. Intelligent backup scheduling and bandwidth throttling with the Simpana 9 Edge Data Protection solution helps overcome these challenges and makes protecting these environments practical.

Branch Offices

Protecting data at the edge, such as on desktops and laptops in remote and branch offices can be challenging because there is such a diversity of operating systems. Backup and recovery of mixed Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms can make even the most seasoned backup team cringe. Simpana software easily supports these varied environments using a single software platform, allowing administrators to focus on higher priority activities.

Managing Large Environments

Managing tens of thousands or even a few hundred desktops and laptops can be a daunting task because of each unique enduser environment. Simpana 9 makes this more manageable with a policy based approach for client discover/ auto-install of backup agents, independent backup schedules, and even content filters. Comprehensive reporting also helps administrators become more proactive to meet or even improve service levels.

Desktop Laptop Platform Refresh

Upgrading or changing your desktop/laptop platform is an ideal time to re-evaluate your backup and recovery strategy. Regardless of whether you use online backup or use an in-house approach, this is the time to upgrade your protection strategy along with your computing platforms.

eDiscovery and Compliance

A company’s more vital and potentially incriminating data often resides on the desktops and laptops of individual employees. Even if eDiscovery and compliance are not important to your company today, the Simpana 9 Edge Data Protection solution future-proofs your data management approach in case these capabilities are ever needed.

Self-Service Restore

It may happen infrequently, but it’s never convenient when the hard drive on an employee’s laptop or desktop fails. End-users typically need just a few files to stay productive and already have access to the web. The convenient Simpana 9 web console allows users to easily restore one or many files to any computer without the need for VPN access. In addition, this web console enables end-users to access all their protected data on their PC from any device with a web browser. For example, say a sales executive is at an important meeting at the potential customer’s site and their battery dies. Using Simpana software and the Edge Data Protection solution, that user could quickly and securely pull up the file they need using another computer with web access.

End-User Management

Central administration is a great way to save costs and enforce corporate governance. However, the unique environment of each desktop/laptop end-user calls for flexibility to ensure that backups happen regularly, reliably, and with minimum disruption to end-user productivity. The Simpana 9 web console gives each end-user the flexibility to monitor and manage their client in a manner that fits their needs, yet fulfills corporate requirements.