Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Corp. recently announced the release of its Mobile Information Protection service, which focuses on information distributed outside the data centre on desktops, laptops and PDAs, the company said.
Tim Bowers, director of EDS Intelligent Storage Services, said companies often don’t think about data protection and storage until it’s too late. “It’s one of those things where you don’t necessarily get into trouble unless something happens,” Bowers said.
But Adam Couture, a principal analyst with Gartner Inc., said most companies already have some sort of policy in place for desktops and laptops, but because these solutions are bandwidth consuming, they become unattainable. “The road to hell is paved with good back-up intentions,” he said.
To get around this problem, the Mobile Information Protection solution uses Data-Protector software from rival company Connected Corp. to reduce the amount of storage capacity and bandwidth needed for back-up, the company said, adding that the reduced bandwidth is essential for mobile workers dependant on slower telephone lines for network connectivity.
Although EDS and Connected are competing companies – Connected is also offering this service – they occupy different market spaces, Bowers said. The companies also differ in how they are delivering the solution.
Bowers said Connected is going after the smaller environments with its solutions whereas EDS is targeting the larger enterprise market.
“[Connected is] offering all of their back-ups over the Internet. We are offering that in phase two…today we are offering it via a service management centre, which is one of our large data centres which has a high level of redundancy and protection, or we’ll put it at the client’s location,” Bowers said.
The services can be used to back up a piece of data or the entire desktop.
EDS expects both services to be available to Canadian customers next year.