BE 15 - Data Recovery Service

Initial Business Plan

The initial business plan is developed to provide the contours for bringing a Data Recovery Service (DRS), based on a combination of grid technology and peer-to-peer computing to the market. This business plan is aimed at the providers, Rabobank, LogicaCMG and AlmereGrid,  of the proposed DRS service.

Business continuity management (BCM) is a relevant subject which has received attention due to incidents concerning terrorist attacks (e.g. 9/11, Madrid) and or other calamities (e.g. severe weather conditions, explosions (e.g. Buncefield UK), power grid failures). Besides overall calamities there could be other calamities such as fire and theft in the building or no access as a result of the calamity where the business resides. This situation could result in a standstill of business operations and possible in the long term result in bankruptcy of the business.

Although data recovery is already an integral part of daily operations in the current method of working there are several disadvantages with the current operations:

• Availability: data that has been stored is not geographical removed far away to be of any use in a calamity.
• Operations: data recovery is depended on manual procedures. For small companies this could be time consuming or are not adhered to properly to be of any use. E.g. there is too long a time differences between the last ‘backup’ and the actual need for the data.
• Technical: restoring data and applications is not done properly due to a lack of technical knowledge . E.g. applications parameters in configuration files or authorization settings are not included in the backup.

SME’s can compete with the before mentioned possible problems about backup and recovery of their critical data. They have a lack of money or people with the needed technical skills for performing this little, but very important activity of storing the data on a save place.

For the providers the following added value in terms of products and services can be offered:

Rabobank can provide information security regarding the integrity of the data being used in a DRS service by SME’s. For internet banking Rabobank uses a very strong service to authenticate there customers. As SME’s are already using this technology, this service can easily be integrated into the DRS service for recovery of data by the SME from the GRID network. This service could enable authentication between two parties where Rabobank acts as a trusted-third party to ascertain the authentication claim and verify the authenticy of that claim. With regard to the Data Recovery Service this service could be used for signing-up to the service and authentication for login purposes for the DRS customer.

Furthermore Rabobank is an ‘all-finanz’ company that has considerable experience with all kind of payment services. These could be used for financial settlement of any payment transactions for the use of DRS.

As Rabobank has it’s roots in SME’s customers Rabobank could be the spill in bringing SME’s together for the DRS service is a peer to peer relation. 

LogicaCMG can offer its clients a range of system integration services ranging from application development,IT outsourcing and Business Process Outsourcing to the implementation of commercial off the shelf software (COTS) or large Enterprise Resource Systems. LogicaCMG is independent of any particular solution and will help clients select the best solution for their specific situation.

AlmereGrid has an operational Grid, divided in a production and test Grid. For the BE15 experiment, this Grid will be enhanced. The basic service offered by AlmereGrid itself is providing a Grid test bed for testing new applications. Partners of AlmereGrid will use the results to improve their services and products.

Based on desk research and a number of expert sessions we developed the business model evaluation framework and grid adoption and implementation model. We conducted a survey among 2485 SME’s in the Netherlands to analyze the adoption readiness for a DRS Service. Remarkable is the fact that the biggest group of SME´s in The Netherlands are professional services. Furthermore there are a lot of self employed SME´s participating. he survey among SME’s in the Netherlands showed 85% are severely affected by the loss of crucial data, however most respondents from the survey think they can manage this loss. Although data recovery is already an integral part of daily operations for most of the SME’s, the current method of working is characterized as a rather inefficient manual process. Most SME’s lack the resources (financial and technical) for a full data backup and recovery process. The majority of SME’s (70%) use different forms of manual data backup and recovery, like CD-ROMs. 30 % of the SME’s make use of automated data backup via external service providers. Most on-line models used in the market so far are based on client-server computing, where data is stored on an external dedicated server of the service provider. A few providers make use of peer-to peer computing. 60% of the SME are satisfied with their current back-up facilities.

The networked business model behind the DRS concept consists of a number of different capabilities. These are combined as a networked business. These capabilities are delivered in a co-operation model of different actors, see Figure 1.

The Grid Service Provider is the party delivering the DRS application to the market, managing the operational process, delivering the DRS services in an SLA to the end-user and handling financial settlement. The Trusted Third Party arranges contractual arrangements, authentication of users and possibly financial settlement. The system integrator creates the system design and provides system integration services, for instance by combining grid software with data recovery software. Two types of Grid Network Peers are part of the DRS service. The end users are the organizations (SME’s) who have applied to the DRS service. The resource providers deliver storage capacity and computing power, possibly in an on-demand or utility based contract. Most grid network peers are also user of the service, some are only resource provider but hopefully most are both end user and resource provider.  Furthermore, a number of super peers can be part of the grid network (e.g. large companies offering backup facilities via the grid), although this does not fit in the basic DRS concept with peer-to-peer computing. Finally, there will probably be resellers/distributors of the service. Companies could sell or provider the service as part of a packaged deal. For instance the Rabobank could consider offering a back-up restore service as part of a package of products and services. The technical service itself would then be bought from a Grid Service provider.

The DRS solution provides four distinctive sources of value compared to existing data backup and recovery solutions in the market. DRS is a solution for an individual data backup and recovery problem with an important network element. Network externalities are the basis of the DRS concept. The more users act as a resource provider (peer in the network), the more scalability and storage capacity becomes available in the grid – at a lower cost for the service provider and the end users. Another source of value is automating the data backup and recovery process to a large degree. After initial settings have been made, the DRS software will run as a background process on the computers of its users. Trust is based on involvement of a bank (TTP) and the usage of a trusted authentication and authorization infrastructure. Sharing of (confidential) data in a peer to peer and grid based networked environment requires a high trust level for the service to succeed. Finally, the DRS concept gives the opportunity to link it with a community concept.

In case the DRS can provide sufficient unique value, a direct pricing model can be used. This will be a combination of prepaid service & subscription (the service is provided at a fixed fee per month up to a certain maximum data backup size) and a metered usage (pricing based on usage of capacity in € per Gb). The service can be characterized as commoditized, relatively easy to monitor (e.g. via log-files) and resource usage patters can be forecasted to a certain degree. Therefore metered usage is recommended. End users who also provide storage capacity will probably have no cost at all (community model). The respondents from the survey prefer, with a deviation of 10%, a payment per usage bases. Moreover, most respondents are likely to pay no more than 10 EURO per month for the service.
The initial results of the research show interest in the DRS-concept in the early adopter group of our sample (about 20% of the SMEs in our sample). Creating sufficient trust, while providing the service at relatively low costs will be key requirements for the DRS to succeed.

With regards to the implementation challenges we distinguish between generic implementation challenges for grid based business models, challenges on business network level and challenges on organizational (SME) level. Generic challenges relate to the maturity, stability and security of the software and technologies used, the required level of awareness for a DRS need, the provision of sufficient trust guarantees, fulfilment of legal and privacy requirements and finding the right business model. On business network level a key challenge is providing sufficient distinctive value to create network economies (i.e. enough peers) and development of a transfer model to divide revenues among the stakeholders involved in the networked business model. On organizational and user level the DRS should work flawless with an intuitive easy to use interface.