age Management Practice


March 2007
















Copyright
©2007. The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ESG White Paper
Table of Contents



Introduction............................................................................................................................................................ 2

Data Protection Conundrum ................................................................................................................................ 2

Vision to Visionary ............................................................................................................................................... 2

Path to Excellence................................................................................................................................................. 3

P2E Phase 1: Assessment .................................................................................................................................. 4

P2E Phase 2: Policy Development...................................................................................................................... 5

P2E Phase 3: Services Delivery Management.................................................................................................... 6

P2E Phase 4: Risk Management......................................................................................................................... 6

P2E Phase 5: Operational Excellence................................................................................................................. 7

Use Cases .............................................................................................................................................................. 8

P2E Phase 1: Assessment .................................................................................................................................. 8

P2E Phase 2: Policy Development...................................................................................................................... 9

P2E Phase 3: Service Delivery Management...................................................................................................... 9

P2E Phase 4: Risk Management......................................................................................................................... 9

P2E Phase 5: Operational Excellence............................................................................................................... 10

Bocada Enterprise............................................................................................................................................... 10

Conclusion........................................................................................................................................................... 11

Enterprise Strategy Group

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Introduction


Explosive data growth, complex data protection infrastructures, and governance and compliance
pressures are driving both public and private companies of all sizes and in all geographies and industries
to gain more visibility regarding their data protection infrastructure and processes. Assessing and
reporting on the data protection ecosystem kicks off a progression of initiatives for IT organizations to
reach higher degrees of operational excellence. On this path to excellence, companies are able to build
an operational framework that increases productivity, uses technology intelligently, promotes fiscal
discipline and builds a high degree of customer satisfaction. With each successive phase, IT organizations
raise their operational excellence game and incrementally demonstrate the business value of IT.

Having pioneered data protection reporting and management, Bocada is paving the way again with its
Path to Excellence (P2E) process, an actionable model to improve operational excellence. Based on
Bocadas real-world experiences with customers, P2E encourages IT organizations to strive for operational
excellence, turning the unavoidable costs of governance, risk and compliance into an opportunity to
enhance business processes, deliver higher levels of service and garner improved customer satisfaction.
ESG interviewed many of Bocadas customers employing P2E concepts (in various stages of maturity with
the program) and found that each stage offers significant benefits.

Data Protection Conundrum

The amount of corporate data under protection is growing exponentially every day and the data protection
strategies utilized have become more and more complex. IT organizations that relied on a single,
schedule-centric tape backup solution now employ a number of strategies and vendors products in
multiple locations to cope with business requirements, government regulations, corporate governance and
dramatic data growth. While IT is tasked to manage more with less, there are business imperatives to
meet service level agreements (SLAs), maintain compliance and maximize total cost of ownership (TCO).
IT staffs need to leverage automation, implement best practices and gain the insight needed to drive
operational improvements.

Vision to Visionary

One of ITs top concerns is reliable recovery of data. Not only does data loss impact business productivity
and potentially revenues, but failure to produce data could result in fines or damage to a companys
reputation. Assessment, reporting and policy-based management can systematically deliver and automate
best practices, ultimately improving the operation of the data protection environment.

Whether its getting a handle on the data protection environment or mitigating risk, IT organizations have
realized the value of visibility into the various components of their data protection ecosystem and
processes. Some start with manual processes and scripts and then move to discrete backup reporting
tools, cobbling together the information they need to get insight. More progressive IT organizations may
venture beyond backup-vendor-specific management tools and problem logs to a data protection
management (DPM) solution that delivers automated cross-technology and cross-domain data collection,
stores collected data in a relational database and provides custom reporting and powerful analytics.

Just as IT organizations transition over time from basic information gathering tools to more comprehensive
ones, IT organizations also progress from basic to more sophisticated use of these products. Bocada
realized its customers each followed a similar pattern. At first, IT organizations gained basic insight to
reactively deal with weak links in their environment. As they learned more about their data protection
systems and processes, they incrementally applied features of the Bocada Enterprise DPM solution and
built out best practices, eventually reaching operational excellence. Stepping through this progression
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gradually increases ITs business contribution and ultimately delivers more strategic benefits to the
company.

Bocada, the leader in data protection management solutions, developed an actionable framework based on
the experiences of many of its several hundred customer installations. Bocadas P2E provides a blueprint
for IT organizations utilizing Bocada Enterprise to help them best apply the solution to achieve operational
excellence goals.

Path to Excellence


Bocadas Data Protection Management solution provides the intelligence to pinpoint, identify and solve
challenges typical in data protection environments. The Bocada Path to Excellence is a continuum of
phases an IT organization using the DPM solution progresses through, delivering higher degrees of service
and business value with each successive phase.

The Bocada P2E framework (see Figure One) consists of five phases, each supported by features and
functions within the Bocada Enterprise DPM solution. The framework outlines the customers before
state for each phase, the goals and benefits of addressing issues at each stage and customer best
practices to assist in streamlining the process. The P2E is a progressive model; successful completion of
each phase helps increase IT business contribution and achieve operational excellence:
Phase 1 Assessment
Phase 2 Development of policies & procedures
Phase 3 - Services delivery management
Phase 4 Risk management:
Phase 5 Operational excellence:



Figure One: Path to Excellence Process
Bocada
IT Busin
ess Con
tribution
Assess
Policy
Developm
ent
Services
Delivery
Managem
ent
Risk
Managem
ent
Operation
al
Excellenc
e
Path to Excellence (P2E)
Process
Progression Over Time
Bocada
IT Busin
ess Con
tribution
Assess
Policy
Developm
ent
Services
Delivery
Managem
ent
Risk
Managem
ent
Operation
al
Excellenc
e
Path to Excellence (P2E)
Process
Progression Over Time
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P2E Phase 1: Assessment


Managing a data protection environment can be an overwhelming undertaking. Ensuring the recoverability
of data means making certain that the backup infrastructure is operational, efficient and compliant.
Unfortunately, the environment is not static. Data capacity growth, new compliance mandates,
infrastructure component upgrades, new applications, reduced backup windows, fluctuating staffing levels,
errors and malfunctions or some other new requirement all make it diffi