Asigra Advises Organizations to Review DR Strategy

Colorado State University hurricane forecasters recently predicted that the United States is likely to experience above-average hurricane activity during 2009. CSU forecasters predicted that the 2009 hurricane season is expected to bring 14 named tropical storms to the Atlantic Ocean with seven of those possibly becoming hurricanes.

Hurricanes are defined as storms that have winds that exceed 80 mph. Names are not assigned to tropical storms until sustained winds of 39 mph are reached. The CSU researchers predicted that three of the seven hurricanes could develop into ‘intense or major’ storms. These storms rate as a Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale and have sustained winds in excess of 111 mph.

Since the 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, many companies located along the Gulf Coast have begun to take extensive precautions to protect valuable corporate data to ensure business continuity in the event severe weather destroys a datacenter or renders corporate offices inoperable. Mission critical corporate information and customer information is backed up at remote locations that are far away from areas that are in the path of most storms. The information that is stored at the remote locations is a mirror image of the data that is used to run the businesses.

Asigra provides the IT industry’s most comprehensive cloud backup and recovery platform available for both on-premise and hosted cloud backup and recovery services, bringing comprehensive coverage, efficiency and simplicity to the process. Asigra eliminates many backup pain points through technology that is designed for enterprise-wide centralization without the operational complexity of traditional solutions. More importantly, the Asigra Hybrid Cloud Backup and Recovery platform enables greater automation and backup data redundancy to ensure reliable recovery when required.

“In recent years the United States has been hit with a number of deadly hurricanes,” said Eran Farajun, Executive Vice President, Asigra. “A number of companies that have operations along the Gulf Coast are taking proactive measures to ensure that information – their life blood – is safe and instantly recoverable in the event of a major disruption in business.”

The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season was considered to be very active. Sixteen named storms formed, eight of them became hurricanes and five of those became major hurricanes. The 2008 hurricane season was the third most costly on record with more than $41 billion in damage in the U.S.  

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike proved to be two of the most devastating storms of the season. Gustav hit a massive land area that included parts of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, eastern Oklahoma, southeastern Kansas and Missouri. Extensive rain also hit Illinois, southeastern Wisconsin, southeastern Iowa, northwestern Indiana and most of Michigan. Businesses and other organizations in these regions were all at risk of operational disruption as the effects of Gustav stretched from the Gulf Coast through the Ohio Valley.

Ike was the most destructive storm of the season. It devastated Cuba as a major hurricane and made landfall near Galveston, Texas as a category 2 storm.