| Level of Capital Expenditure | High. Especially for large data volumes or complex backup requirements. | None. It’s free to signup.
Please note: There will be an ongoing monthly operating fee, depending on how much data you want to backup. |
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| Total cost of ownership | Moderate. Together with hardware maintenance costs, there are often unseen human resource costs. | Low. Per GB monthly fees reduce as storage volumes grow. |
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| Maintenance/Management | High. Engineers are required to design, manage and maintain backup processes as well as recover data. | Low. Management of backup processes can be pushed to the user level. |
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| Scalability | Low. Limited flexibility when storage volumes increase or backup strategies change. | High. Zen manage the growth of the infrastructure enabling your data volumes to grow without your concern. |
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| Data Security | Low. Tapes can be lost, stolen or damaged in even the most well managed backup procedures. | High. Two copies of your Data are stored in an encrypted format in multiple highly secure data centres. |
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| Automation | Moderate. Even automated tape backup installations require manual intervention to remotely store copies. | High. The entire backup process is managed by the client software and storage network. |
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| Reliability | Low. Tapes are often weakly built and can suffer from reliability issues. | High. Data is stored on multiple disks at multiple sites. All are constantly monitored and engineers are on call 24x7. |
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| Protection | Low. Data is generally stored in an unencrypted format making theft a significant risk. | High. Data is encrypted when in transit and in storage, eliminating the risk of it being compromised. |
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| Ease of Data Restoration | Low. Time intensive processes are required in order for engineers to restore large data sets. | High. Individual or multiple files can be restored quickly and easily by the user. |
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| Future Proof | No. As storage technology evolves your investment can quickly become obsolete. | Yes. Zen continually invest in performance hardware to meet customers' storage requirements. |
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| Required length of Backup window | Long. Large data volumes and longer working hours are continually shortening tape backup windows. | Short. Backups can take place whilst users are working and incremental backups shorten the backup cycle. |
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