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Technology Peace of mind Keep your agency resilient by using off-site data storage By Nancy Doucette Author’s note: This is the second part of our discussion of off-site data storage. In the December 2006 issue, we spoke with the CIO of a Stockton, California-based agency about how they survived numerous server crashes without losing time or data. We also spoke with the president of a managed services company that provides the off-site data storage for that agency, and a former agent who now advises other agents on the subject of remote data protection and disaster planning. What keeps you awake at night? If you’re David Bushey, CPCU, CIC, president of Marcotte Insurance Agency, Inc., in Omaha, Nebraska, one of the things that concerned him was: What would be the best way to maintain the agency in the event of a manmade or natural disaster? In Bushey’s ruminations, a “disaster” would restrict the staff’s ability to access the agency data, or it would hamper access to the office itself, or it might make it impossible—or inadvisable—for staff to get to the office. But rather than remaining sleepless in Omaha, Bushey joined with Greg Paulsen, CPCU, ARM, AU, and other members of the agency’s management team to form the contingency and disaster planning committee. Paulsen, who is vice president of commercial underwriting for the agency, notes that his responsibilities also include assisting management with technology implementation and technology-related projects—such as working on disaster recovery and contingency planning. Paulsen recalls that as the committee worked through the steps that would ultimately produce the agency’s disaster recovery and business continuity plan, they investigated a number of solution providers that would help the agency respond to a disaster—whatever that disaster might be. All of the solutions came highly recommended, he says, but the selection process involved more than just an organization’s reputation based on working with other agencies or industries. One of the solutions that the committee considered would provide a satellite dish and a trailer stocked with PCs following a disaster that rendered the building uninhabitable. The pricing of the product was manageable. However, Paulsen says, “Our outside computer tech cautioned us that our tape and tape drive might not work well on the technology that this provider supplied. That gave us pause. The data that we rely on so heavily might not be accessible, due to the intricacies of tape backups and variations in tape drive manufacturers. We wanted to be sure we had all our data. It is our lifeblood.” While working through the numerous “what if” scenarios that go into creating a disaster plan, Marcotte’s contingency and disaster planning committee attended a number of seminars on pandemic flu. (See sidebar on page 50.) “Under the solutions we’d considered to that point,” Paulsen remembers, “we would be reliant on going to a physical facility. But if Avian Flu took over the country, our employees wouldn’t want to go to a site where they’d be commingling with others. “We needed a solution that would enable us to have a distributed computing environment—basically a virtual private network approach—that would allow our staff to access not only our server but also the online version of our agency management system (The Agency Manager™—TAM—from Applied Systems). Most of our employees have high-speed Internet access and could work from home,” he points out. Given those concerns, the committee also examined off-site data storage solutions. Some of the solutions were too expensive—not just the monthly costs, but the set-up costs, Paulsen continues. In one instance, the vendor required that the agency increase its bandwidth. In another instance, the vendor required that the agency switch its Internet provider. Another provider was “oversubscribed” in the committee’s opinion—too many clients and not enough resources. However, that vendor did offer a “cold backup” option meaning that Marcotte could store server equipment in one of their locations and the vendor would provide data streaming. The downside to that option was that someone from Marcotte would have to keep the server updated with the current version of TAM. But, Paulsen says, the committee reasoned that if the agency were to switch to the online version of TAM following a disaster, it would automatically be on the current version of the management system. So the next step was to find an off-site data storage solution that integrated with TAMOnline. He says the solution that fulfilled the committee’s requirements was ebackup Inc., located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. “All an agency needs in order to use ebackup is a computer network,” explains Colin Graham, vice president of sales and marketing for ebackup. “Our software is installed at the agency site and the agency manages its own backups. ebackup doesn’t go in and get the data. Our software gets the data every day and sends it to us. We store that data. Our process encrypts the data before it’s uploaded to our storage facility. Only the agency knows that encryption code. We do not.” “Our software has been around since 1986,” explains Rowland Perkins, founder and CEO of ebackup. “That’s a long time in the digital media world. The bottom line of our business is protecting people’s digital assets.” Paulsen says he’s impressed by ebackup’s data compression rate. “We were storing about 87.6 gigabytes of raw information,” he reports. “That was compressed down to about 10.2 gigabytes. That’s a very good compression ratio.” “The quickest, most efficient and cost effective method of backing up information is to use a digital medium such as ebackup’s Rapid Recovery product,” Graham declares. After the initial backup, ebackup tracks only changes. Each day Marcotte runs between 800 and 1,000 files—pieces of information within TAM that have been touched, Paulsen explains. “I receive two daily e-mail reports from ebackup that tell me the number of files that were backed up and the number of gigabytes that those files represent,” he says. “So if there was a glitch in our Internet service, or on my PC where ebackup runs in the background, I’d know about it.” Paulsen adds that even with the ebackup solution in place, Marcotte still uses tape backups. “Our tape backups work,” he says. “We haven’t had any tape failures. We have a vendor that manages a lot of our IT that verifies that the backup is complete.” As with any plan, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” so Marcotte is going to have what Paulsen describes as a “tabletop disaster recovery” event to test the plan and the various components. Then about a month later, the agency will undergo a “hot disaster” involving some of the agency’s larger customers. “You don’t have to live on the Gulf Coast to experience a disaster,” he says. “In our area we have some severe tornadoes. The winter weather can pose problems as well. Rain, followed by ice, then heavy snow brings down power lines. Suppose you have to go for a week or so with no electricity. How do you service your customers during this time when they really need you?” *
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