14 Oct 2008

SaaS 'can aid data backup'

Data can be stored externally and yet be more secure and more easily retrievable in the event of disaster recovery, it has been suggested.

Chris Lindsay, business head of software-as-a-service (SaaS) at BT, writes in his blog at computing.co.uk that people are often worried about their data not being stored on their business premises.

But in the event of a disaster, applications from SaaS vendors are more secure and easier to retrieve, he said.

Mr Lindsay wrote that someone he knew had his firm's servers stolen from its premises and had to rebuilt the IT systems and manually put the data back onto them.

"An application from a SaaS vendor may go down for ten minutes or half an hour but not very often, and when it comes back up everything is still there," he said.

IT users are also able to try out applications in the SaaS model before they buy them, which is helpful in the current economic climate, Mr Lindsay noted.

SaaS delivers better automation of business processes and offers a low-risk start-up cost, IT expert Phil Wainewright wrote on his blog at ZDNet this week.