Quantum Sponsors getyourbackupscore.com

Quantum Corp. announced founding sponsorship of www.getyourbackupscore.com, a free online site designed to help IT departments improve their data protection policies by comparing their backup results to industry best practices and to peer results.

The tool provides a score based on how well companies meet requirements in eight key areas associated with backup, recovery, disaster recovery protection and long-term retention.

During the initial beta phase of the site, users will receive reports and comparisons, as well as help build the database for best practice comparisons. Beta site early users are encouraged to provide feedback about the tool.

The site is open to sponsorship opportunities, and additional sponsors are anticipated.

The Capabilities of getyourbackupscore.com

• Provide Feedback for Improving Backup Practices. The results for each user entering data are compared both to the average score of other participants and to the score of the most effective IT organizations. The site generates a report providing feedback for each area, suggesting ways for the organization to improve its practices.
• Build a Database for Meaningful Comparisons. The collected information will be used to build the industry’s first systematic database designed to provide meaningful comparisons of backup practices among organizations. As the database expands it will provide direct comparisons between different categories of organizations and will include companies protecting similar amounts of data, departments in similar industries, and the broad IT community. It will also serve as a source of information about evolving industry best practices to be shared periodically with the IT community.

Areas for Measurement and Scoring
To create the scoring system and reports, guidance was solicited from a large number of end users and industry specialists involved with backup on a daily basis.

The eight topic areas comprising the Backup Score pertain to all backup environments so that data can be gathered from a broad cross section of IT departments:

• Backup Performance
• Backup Reliability
• Troubleshooting Time for Failed Backup Jobs
• File Restore Time
• File Restore Reliability
• Site Loss Protection
• Site Loss Protection Administration Time
• Backup Administration Time

Framework for Development
Future possibilities for expanding the site include adding features such as profiles of companies with backup policies that exemplify best practices for the industry, and a forum allowing end users to ask a panel of independent experts questions about backup and DR protection.

Russell Fellows, senior analyst, Evaluator Group, said: "Backup administrators often operate in isolated environments. By providing a common base set of metrics, getyourbackupscore.com has the potential to provoke shared discussion around critical industry topics. We look forward to seeing what this unique research database reveals."

Daniel Furth, chief technical officer, StorageHawk, said: "We’re excited to join as a founding sponsor for this site. It shows great promise as a framework for our customers to examine their backup practices and identify areas meriting attention."

Rob Clark, senior vice president, Disk and Tape Backup Product Group, Quantum, said: "A major goal of the Backup Score is to help IT departments think about their backup goals and practices in a systematic way – to set goals, track results, measure how well an organization improves over time. We believe it can become a significant new resource for helping them understand and improve their approach to data protection."

Availability
A beta version of www.getyourbackupscore.com is free and available beginning June 28.