The Cyber Innovation Center is the anchor building in the National Cyber Research Park in
Shreveport-Bossier, LA.
Field Conditions: Cloudy
The demand for bigger storage continues to grow, and it’s nearly impossible for
infrastructures to keep pace. Adding physical storage and networking equipment is
not only cost-prohibitive, but there simply
is not enough physical space or secure
space to put the added servers. Many are
also finding that – by storing and managing their data onsite – the business is now
significantly exposed to a single point of
failure. With the ever-increasing possibility that a natural disaster could mean
costly data loss, many are exploring the
cloud to meet data storage and disaster
recovery needs.
Investments in cloud-based services
are expected to become one of the fast-est-growing technology segments in the
world. Industry analyst firm Forrester
Research recently took a close look at the
market. In their recent report, “Sizing the
Cloud,” the firm pegs the current industry
size at $40.7 billion.
Taking this one step further, many
teams are making cloud storage the very
centerpiece of their disaster recovery
plans. It should be clear by now that sports
teams take their data very seriously. We
also know the devastating impact and costs
resulting from infrastructure downtime.
Putting the pieces together, it’s no surprise
many are exploring their cloud options –
building a cost-effective infrastructure to
protect data, lower management costs, and
ensure the reliability of real-time data.
According to Forrester Research:
“Instead of enterprises buying resources in
case of disaster, cloud computing, and its
pay-per-use pricing model allows them to
pay for long-term data storage while only
paying for servers if they have a need to
spin them up for testing or in the event
of a disaster. This provides significant
cost reduction and removes several bar-
riers to entry for many firms looking for
faster disaster recovery than what they can
receive from tape.”
Sports Teams Get Real
There are more than a few real-world
examples of today’s sports teams leveraging cloud-based storage and disaster recovery to grow and protect their businesses.
Just ask the IT team at the National
Football League’s Atlanta Falcons. Like
many sports teams, the franchise relied on
tape for backup of critical data – covering everything from ticketing, coaching,
scouting, training, team administration,
and ongoing retail point-of-sale data. For
many years, the organization backed up
business-critical information on tape. But
they soon found tape didn’t provide the
peace-of-mind that all information could
be recovered in the event of a major loss.
The group decided to fully upgrade their
IT system to cloud storage and back-up
services – allowing quick retrieval if the
primary storage servers were offline due to
outages or natural disasters.
Not a fan of the Atlanta Falcons? How
about the Dallas Cowboys? Over the
years, the team has made significant tech-
nology investments at Cowboy Stadium
to provide fans with a highly interactive
media experience. Trouble was, their tape
back-up system couldn’t keep pace, and IT
became frustrated by the hours of mainte-
nance required. The system also placed the
team’s business-critical information at risk
in the event of failure. The Cowboys chose
to implement a cloud-based data protection
and back-up strategy to manage both busi-
ness data and the several hundred hours
of voice, data, and video footage. With
the successful transition, the team now
has an effortless and accurate approach to
data backup and recovery, using industry-
leading de-duplication and cloud storage
to store digital files – and quickly retrieve
them if primary storage is offline due to
manmade or natural disasters.
It’s a Whole New Ball Game
For professional sports team and companies worldwide, data is the very engine that
revs their businesses. They rely on immediate access to reliable, real-time information
to make use of everything from merchandising to player statistics – because the old
way of tape just isn’t cutting it. To guarantee business success, these franchises
are now making cloud the very centerpiece
of their data storage and disaster recovery
plans. For many, it’s the only way to ensure
they can remain in the business of entertaining millions of fans worldwide.
It’s a whole new world, and sports
teams must always have their head in the
game. This means placing cloud-based
disaster recovery strategies at the core of
their playbooks.
v
Brian Vandegrift is executive vice president of innovation and sales at Venyu, a
premier provider of data center, managed
hosting, cloud, virtualization, and data protection solutions.
