He says that the farther the backup site is from the primary site, the more expensive it is to transfer the data in real time. Omgeo has a high-availability environment with a blend of hot sites and cold sites, referring to the sites level of importance.
One way to manage costs is deciding which applications or systems a firm wants to run hot, warm or cold, says Voutsakis. "A trading system is hotter than something like a CRM system. We have over 100 software applications residing on the network. Data changes are being copied back and forth for those systems that are hotter." For others, they're copied at night.
Foster notes that setting up a second site that replicates the data center and the connectivity and redundancy needed to provide for backup can cost thousands, making it a "real challenge for mid-sized brokers."
Steve Higgins, director of business continuity solutions at EMC in Hopkinton, Mass., says that the "economics we've had the last few years has made people cost conscious." One of the things he sees when it comes to disaster recovery is a "migration from tape to disk."
That's because recovery from tape can be an arduous process that takes precious time. People have to package tapes and send them out and then recall them if they're needed. "The ability to recover and restart your business (from tape) has extended well beyond what people hoped for." As well, he says, there's no guarantee the tape will be able to be read. "Tapes fail over time," he says.
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