What Happened in Vegas, Stayed in Vegas
Well, until now. This is an interesting story about archiving and how it could have, but didn't help a friend of mine.
Often, when speaking with customers, I talk to them about the 4 fundamental principals with regard to data protection:
- Assess
- Archive
- Backup
- Manage
The assessment phase is a multi-dimensional phase. It's about people, process and technology. Like with most things, the technology piece is the easy piece. EMC has tools that allow us to scan file systems, data bases and email systems that report back a litany of information including but not limited to:
- Number of files
- Age of files
- Volume of data
- Owner of the data
Once EMC passes the information to the customer about their data, the real hard work begins. Armed with the information, IT now has to go and speak to line of business managers in order to determine the value of the data, and how data of a specific value needs to be managed and protected. The problem is line of business managers want everything saved forever, until IT tells them what the bill would be. IT begins to describe the different 'classes' of service capabilities and line of business managers, who don't really care about the details (not because they don't care, they are just too busy), finally say "Just give me the highest level of protection I can get for the least amount of money." IT now does the best they can to align their perceived value of the data, to the most appropriate backup and archive capabilities they have.
Now, in Vegas, I think we can all agree that the video surveillance has a ton of value to the stake holders of the hotels and casinos. The amount of debauchery that takes place in Vegas with the amount of money that is 'rolling' around Vegas, it is important to 'know what is going on' and to make sure all situations can be handled as efficiently as possible and this is where video surveillance comes into play and the more you 'save' on high speed disk, the easier it is to get to the truth or solve the mystery.