IBM Launches Cloud-Based Business Continuity with SmartCloud Resilience 
This week, IBM is launching its SmartCloud Resilience business continuity service. The latest addition to IBM’s SmartCloud line lets customers plug into the cloud for server recovery, managed archives and on-going IT operations – with security, compliance and data protection features.
This week, IBM launches its SmartCloud Resilience business continuity services. The services let customers plug into the cloud for server recovery, managed archives and on-going IT operations – with security, compliance and data protection features.
“Customers today don’t just want backup, they want to be able to achieve full recovery of all data and operations,” Rich Cocchiara, IBM Distinguished Engineer and CTO of Business Continuity and Resiliency Services, told IDN. “Customers want more than infrastructure recovery services. They want the ability to recovery from failover quickly, as well as the ability to control that failover environment.”
The service is tiered to support archives or fully-restored operations, and uses virtual and physical server recovery services on IBM’s secure cloud infrastructure. It also allows clients to securely manage and balance workloads, lower application and system downtime, reduce data loss and monitor operational expenses and service levels.
The IBM SmartCloud Resilience services, the latest extension of IBM’s SmartCloud managed services, include:
- IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery – Provides clients an easy-to-use portal for remote access to restore business operations on IBM’s recovery infrastructure. It replicates both server software and associated data continuously.
- IBM SmartCloud Archive – Designed to meet privacy and regulatory compliance, this feature provides clients with advanced documents and records management, including advanced search, indexing, retrieval and eDiscovery.
"Customers [can] choose the level of recovery they want, from archiving all the way up to continuous never-fail operations. "
Rich Cocchiara,
CTO of Business Continuity & Resiliency Services
Distinguished Enginee
IBM
The SmartCloud Resilience offerings also aims to cut recovery times from disruptions. It provides automation and cloud tools to recovery non-virtualized and virtualized assets, down to granular functions of selected servers on a virtual machine (VM) running on cloud infrastructure at IBM’s recovery center. Customers can also select an always available virtual machine,” option, Cocchiara added.
IBM’s SmartCloud Resilience
Lets Firms Tier Cloud Strategy, Risk
IBM’s latest services leverage IBM’s SmartCloud to provide customers “a tiered approach” to enterprise data recovery and disaster management, Cocchiara said. “We can allow customers to choose the level of recovery they want, based on various business cases that need everything from archiving all the way up to continuous never-fail operations,” he told IDN. “Using a combination of physical and virtual [infrastructure] lets customers tier their risk.”
Cocchiara described a range of customer scenarios. “A customer can now say ‘I have this set of applications and data that are critical and can never be unavailable.’ We can support failover instantaneously for those cases,” he said. Customers can elect to place important data that is less critical to minute-by-minute operations in archive files and always know they have full access to that data when needed, he added.
IBM’s tiering approach also lets customers choose the most effective method for on-boarding data and applications to IBM’s SmartCloud, with options for periodic data backup and continuous replicating and provisioning,
IBM SmartCloud will support a wide range of applications, including web frontends, database applications, customer relations and B2B applications. IBM also offers consulting to help customers define a business resiliency and tiering strategy for the cloud, Cocchiara added.
IBM’s SmartCloud Resilience cloud-based business continuity services complement the current IBM SmartCloud Managed Backup service launched two years ago.
