What’s the best backup solution for my environment?

In May 2019, a ransomware attack held the city of Baltimore’s computers hostage, preventing its citizens from paying water bills or parking tickets. City leaders say that fully restoring systems takes months and even then, data may be corrupted or unusable. In efforts to employ more technology in city infrastructure, cyberhackers are infiltrating city operations more than ever before.
If you’re reading this, chances are highly likely that you’re unsatisfied with your current backup solution. According to CommVault, the statistics around backups and data restores reveal:
• Only 57% of IT managers have a backup solution in place, of which 75% were not able to restore their data.
• 81% of ransomware victims felt confident in their ability to restore completely from backups, but only 42% could restore their data fully.
• Sixty percent of organizations shut down after a data loss disaster and the average cost of downtime is $250,000 per hour.
Perhaps you’re all too familiar with these statistics and are wondering how to implement a quality backup solution that works for your budget and environment.
Answer these questions and read on to determine the best backup solution for your environment.

How Much Am I Really Paying for Protection?
Consider the true cost of backups and disaster recovery for your organization. You may be paying for hardware and software licensing, network hardware infrastructure, management costs, disaster recovery location, environment management and more. How much are you paying in staff to manage everything and training on the skills required for equipment maintenance? Are you paying for full-time use of expertise or technology that you only use part of the time? Can you put a cost on unreliable backups, slow backups and restores, low service levels, downtime or noncompliance?

NEC Solution Simplifies Backup Complexity – NEC/B&A Case Study:

UNIVERGE BLUE Backup as a Service Case Study: B & A from InteractiveNEC

How Complex is My Environment?

If your IT environment keeps changing, includes multiple applications, legacy systems or other complex infrastructure, you’re already familiar with the cost of owning several different software and hardware licenses. Changes in public policy may require technology updates or backup reliability to maintain compliance with new regulations. Data loss, intrusion and cyber threats add another layer of complexity requiring continual management, monitoring and updates. You may also manage this environment on your own, in reactive mode and in silos, increasing the cost and inefficiency of your IT staff.

NEC Backup as a Service Reduces Administrative Tasks, Helping IT Departments Help Their Organizations

What’s Your Data Worth? from InteractiveNEC

The Benefits of Backup as a Service (BaaS)

While considering the cost of adding a full-service disaster recovery solution, consider how Backup as a Service creates a better IT employee experience. By implementing a fully-managed and hosted system, NEC manages all the data, licensing, network and infrastructure, mitigating the risk of data loss and increasing your IT staff’s efficiency.

BaaS also adds to a better customer experience. Complex environments may require maintenance to ensure a fully compliant data center. With NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS solution, your employees have data when they need it, without fail, in fully regulated data centers with fully compliant software.

Why Choose NEC for BaaS?

Regardless of your business size or the complexity of your data and storage environment, NEC has a solution for you. NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS is a full-service backup infrastructure, fully managed and at a lower cost of ownership. In fact, your organization will no longer be responsible for maintaining the infrastructure or backups unless you choose to do so. UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS also incorporates the cost of disaster recovery, creating a cost-effective, secure solution. When your business needs a data restore, NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS is available at a moment’s notice:

  • Built and optimized on NEC Storage infrastructure
  • Reliable, managed backup and recovery available anytime
  • Fully staffed network operations center to manage the process
  • Daily or monthly performance and status reports
  • AEC 128-bit encryption for virtual servers, physical servers or database applications
  • Personalized retention and recovery time objectives

NEC will also offer a personal consultation with your organization to accurately assess your current backup solution and determine if a new one is needed.

NEC’s UNIVEGRE BLUE BaaS Deployment Options

With NEC, BaaS is available from self-service to fully managed backup and disaster recovery services:

  • NEC appliance in your local data center (on and off premise and fully managed): Your servers will be backed up to the appliance and then sent to the off premises NEC cloud.  Your organization pays for the appliance and it can be self-managed or fully managed by NEC.
  • Backup to the NEC cloud (fully hosted): Your existing servers are directed to backup to NEC’s cloud over a secure link. Your organization only pays for the space and services you need.

In a fully hosted system, NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE BaaS solution delivers security and performance and is powered by industry-leading CommVault® backup software. The infrastructure is placed in highly secure and compliant IronMountain® data centers offering fully automated, cost-effective and easily scalable backup solutions. Network operations and restores are available 7x24x365. The system integrates with multiple applications and legacy systems including SAP, CRM systems and more. This scenario is best for complex storage and data environments such as healthcare, hospitality and education.

The on-premises appliance is built using the optimal NEC infrastructure platform to meet the requirement.  This includes NEC’s HYDRAstor Physical and Virtual appliances, as well as NEC’s Storage Rich Servers configured with the appropriate software to easily handle the needs of SMB to enterprise businesses.

Is Your Backup Solution Slow or Outdated?

To protect your data, ensure a positive customer experience and create a more efficient employee experience, it may be time to consider a better backup solution. With enormous amounts of data that are changing at rapid speed, tape backups could be outdated as quickly as a backup is finished. Migrations, maintenance and unplanned downtime can disrupt production and reduce the efficiency of your IT staff. Inconsistent and often incomplete backups can cost your organization, including hurting the bottom line dramatically.

NEC’s HYDRAstor, recognized as 2015’s Best of Interop in Storage and with a Network Products Guide Gold Award in Storage Solutions, is widely regarded as the most scalable and fastest dedupe appliance. NEC’s powerful award-winning infrastructure and technology is available and customizable for your IT environment.

Learn more at https://www.necam.com/Cloud/BaaS/ or schedule a no obligation consultation with an NEC backup expert to determine which solution fits your needs and budget. Just fill out the form below, and we will get back to you soon.

Tech Advancements in 2019 and Looking Ahead to 2020

Cloud computing, security and collaboration top the list of enterprise technology trends in 2019. Gartner estimated early in the year that cloud services would grow 17.5 percent over 2019 and infrastructure services would be the fastest growing segment. In 2019 and 2020, business leaders must consider the cost of scalability, communications adaptability and how to help increase efficiency for IT staff.

NEC led the charge with a banner year of new releases, updates and development in the cloud computing and unified communications market.

As we close out the year, let’s review technology trends firmly established in 2019 and what to expect from NEC in 2020.

Reduce the Complexity of Data Center Management

A 2019 Spiceworks survey found that 46% of enterprise organizations planned to adopt hyperconverged infrastructure solutions by 2020. With the complexity of datacenter applications, virtualization and other cloud-based services, IT staff is challenged with managing it all. Each application or service typically involves installing its own server, requiring more storage, networking and skill requirements. Inefficient resource utilization and disorganization leads to unnecessary purchases, the inability to innovate and increased downtime.

In 2019, NEC released a new HCI solution powered by Scale Computing’s HC3 software. HCI consolidates and streamlines IT processes, bringing the hardware costs down and making management easier through one virtualized system and interface. A more stable and simplified environment means that IT staff can be proactive, with far less downtime, and the ability to scale easier.

Solve Communications and Collaboration Challenges

Unified communications helps businesses of all sizes to collaborate from across the globe. As more employees work from remote locations, team communications must be adaptable and easily accessible for reliable availability and a better employee experience. Unified communications requires technology that is easily integrated into current IT environments, cost effective, flexible and scalable.

NEC continues to be a world leader in UC research and development. In 2019, NEC was proud to announce the latest evolution of UNIVERGE-SV9000 series for communications and collaboration.

Securely Prioritize UC Network Traffic

When enterprises rely on unified communications, they are challenged with delivering cost-effective bandwidth while helping critical applications coexist securely and efficiently. In 2019, NEC announced a partnership with Infovista that combines Infovista’s Software defined WAN (SDWAN) capabilities with NEC’s software defined unified communications services. This partnership helps to reduce WAN operating costs while delivering optimal voice quality and dynamic routing of voice traffic based on real-time network traffic and conditions. By leveraging multiple WAN links and centralizing management, application performance is safeguarded and operational efficiency is improved.

Move to More Cloud-Based Solutions

2019 saw the increase in use of as-a-service options including infrastructure, unified communications, collaboration and backups, and this increase will continue throughout the New Year. In 2019, NEC expanded the UNIVERGE BLUE cloud portfolio to include Team Collaboration and BaaS (backup as a service).

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE Team Collaboration improves workforce communications and cooperation, anytime and from anywhere. By simplifying the complexity of voice, video, screen sharing and meetings, the employee experience is enhanced and employee retention improves.

BaaS solutions can reduce the likelihood of data loss and save money on the cost of backup infrastructure. Built on NEC’s powerful distributed grid platform, HYDRAstor®, and secured in Iron Mountain® data centers, this backup as a service solution securely backs up onsite data centers cost-effectively with advanced encryption and easy scalability.

NEC continues to deliver excellence in cloud computing, business continuity, infrastructure and unified communications.

Tech Trends to Look for in 2020

Research shows that IT budgets will continue to increase in 2020, much of it to be spent on new technology as well as hardware replacement. According to a survey of 1,000 North American and European companies conducted by Spiceworks, 44% of businesses plan to increase IT spending in 2020 (vs. 38% in 2019). Gartner also predicts increased worldwide IT spending in 2020 with a growth rate of 3.7% overall.

Here’s a look at some of the trends for 2020 and beyond.

Cloud Computing and Everything as a Service

Installations of cloud-based computing will continue to grow at a record pace as organizations become more familiar and comfortable with the advantages it offers to a mobile workforce. Cloud infrastructure is maturing beyond being separated into public, hosted private and on premises buckets to instead becoming more portable and mobile as well as more standardized.

Spending-wise, Spiceworks’ IT spending survey found that hosted and cloud-based services are expected to make up about 22-23% of the total IT budget in 2020 (for NA and European companies). Online backup and recovery services will represent the second largest budget allocation in cloud services, with larger companies allocating more money toward desktop-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service than smaller organizations.

Edge Computing and IoT

Another leading-edge trend that is gaining momentum is edge computing. Defined as distributed computing, edge computing moves computation and data storage closer to where these services are needed, improving latency and saving bandwidth. Spiceworks reports that 68% of large companies plan to use edge computing by the end of 2020.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are no longer part of science fiction. Spiceworks estimates that businesses using AI-powered tech is going to triple by 2021. As an example, AI/ML can be used to help reduce costs by increasing the efficiency of cloud computing. Workplace efficiency can also be improved by using AI to sort through volumes of data to find the information that is most pertinent. AI also is making its way into collaboration and communication within the enterprise. Both internal and external teams continue to become dispersed, so better and more intelligent collaboration is needed to provide information and insight for decision-making.

Facial Recognition

NEC has paved the way for the use of facial recognition in aviation, government entities and retail and in 2020, use of NEC facial recognition will continue to expand across all industries including healthcare, education and hospitality to increase security and improve the customer experience.

NEC Face Recognition Technology Ranks First in 2019 NIST Accuracy Testing

In retail, NEC facial recognition will continue to be expanded as it’s used to personalize the online and in-store experiences for shoppers. Retailers also use it to fight retail crime and shoplifting.

Several new applications for using facial recognition in healthcare are in development. For example, rather than waiting in line to be seen, a virtual assistant can scan a face and assign a patient to a doctor. In education, administrators will be able to take attendance with the help of facial recognition. Facial recognition will be used to enhance identity management and verification systems within healthcare, education and hospitality. NEC’s goal by developing cross-industry facial recognition solutions is to help businesses enhance their employee and customer experience by enabling seamless, frictionless, and more efficient environments by automating operations with this technology.

Star Alliance and NEC Sign Partnership to Enhance Passenger Experience

Technology will continue to improve in hospitality, including security and access, payment authorization and customer service. Hotels, cruises, airports and restaurants are using facial recognition to personalize the customer experience, including using their face to pay for a meal, check into a flight, get recommendations or receive special offers.

Which of these trends does your organization plan to embrace in the coming year? Talk to an NEC expert to learn more about our award-winning research and development and we can customize a solution for your technology needs.

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Be Prepared When Ransomware Attacks Strike

While ransomware attacks are certainly nothing new, a recent report indicates that such incidents have increased more than 360% year-over-year in the first half of 2019. In addition to businesses and individuals, more and more cyberattacks are targeting local governments in several states, including  Maryland, Michigan, Florida, Indiana and the recent attacks on 23 Texas towns.

These attacks not only cause disruptions and inconvenience, but cost millions in recovery and restoration efforts, loss of revenue, decreased productivity and reduced levels of customer service. Ransomware and other cyberattacks will probably never be eliminated completely, but organizations can mitigate the negative effects of an attack and be prepared before one occurs.

Being Prepared Before an Attack

Here are a few recommended steps that businesses and other organizations should consider before and after an attack.

  • With the help of a security expert, conduct a “health check” on your systems to identify any vulnerabilities. Consider both external attacks as well as internal breaches (intentional or not).
  • Keep backup data off premise, both physically and logically away from production data.
  • Ensure that all systems used for backing up data have the latest software patches, follow protocols and can detect ransomware.
  • Reduce the complexity of having multiple systems by consolidating backup data from all systems—disaster recovery, applications and cloud systems.

Education and communication also play an important part in cyberattacks. Makes sure all end users are educated about security protocols, including not falling for spoofing attacks. If a ransomware or other attack does occur, communication with all stakeholders—employees, partners and customers—is a critical step. Mitigating anxiety and alleviating fear through ongoing communication help make things go more smoothly during the recovery process.

Once an attack occurs, acting quickly will be critical as well. Hire a professional with experience to help you make the right business decisions regarding recovery efforts based on the amount of time it will take, cost considerations and what losses are occurring.

Expertise in Data Backup and Recovery Solutions

NEC, with our experience and expertise in data backup, business continuity planning and recovery solutions, can be a powerful ally in mitigating risks prior to an attack and enabling faster recovery should an attack occur.

NEC delivers Backup as a Service (BaaS) by providing a suite of off-site data backup services. Our BaaS solutions range from ensuring that systems are up-to-date to providing secure targets, which can optionally move data to and from tape storage. Our staff is fully trained on a range of backup systems and can ensure that data is backed up locally and off-premise.

As the first technology infrastructure provider to join Iron Mountain’s Data Center Marketplace, we offer protection and accessibility through infrastructure built to our specifications and made available at Iron Mountain’s secure, compliant and energy efficient above-ground and underground data centers.

In order to optimally address a wide range of customer requirements, NEC offers a suite of BaaS deployment options:

  • Customers with data stored in public clouds, and with highly dispersed systems, often require a fully managed backup solution, with backups performed at the application and bare metal/VM level. Once notified of a ransomware attack, it’s important to scan backups to detect any malware (not just ransomware) so that the system will not be re-infected when restoring from backups prior to the incident. Examining ransomware-encrypted data upfront will help prevent overwriting old “clean” data inside the backup. NEC uses industry leading agents to isolate and not transfer ransomware-encrypted data from any client/server locations. This action is performed to ensure data integrity prior to storage and to alert customers of any intrusion.
  • NEC also provides physical and virtual backup appliances deployed on premise for customers with: a requirement for local storage; a large amount of servers or data and a need for a fully managed backup solution. Through this option, application and bare metal/VM-level backups are stored locally and analyzed for ransomware prior to deduplication, compression, encryption and secure transmission to NEC.
  • Other customers use their own backup software and have strict backup time windows that require the highest performance data backup ingestion. For them, NEC offers an upgraded BaaS Appliance using our HYDRAstor platform. This platform provides the highest ingestion and deduplication performance and delivers highly secure replication to NEC HYDRAstor systems located at Iron Mountain. NEC offers ransomware detection services based on the customer’s specific policies and landscape.
  • For customers that use their own backup software, but don’t require high performance, NEC offers the HYDRAstor Virtual Appliance (HSVA). The HSVA runs in a virtual machine and acts as a backup target for a customer’s own infrastructure. It deduplicates using localized NEC HYDRAstor technology before encrypting data for transfer to NEC HYDRAstor at Iron Mountain. NEC offers ransomware detection services based on the client’s specific policies and landscape.
  • Sometimes customers prefer to push data to tape using industry standards. NEC, in collaboration with Iron Mountain, offers tape restoration and long-term retention services for all the services listed above.

Providing Protection from Both Outside and Inside Threats

Dedicated NEC-based infrastructure is built according to best practices for redundancy and security. Ensuring that data backup systems and storage are off site reduces access to these critical systems by both hackers and insiders. For a reasonable monthly fee, NEC offers low total-cost-of-ownership BaaS that provides:

  • Industry Leading Backup Agents
  • Secure off-site data storage
  • Disaster recovery for 24/7 business continuity
  • Value Added Services
  • On-Premise Appliance Options

For a complimentary Backup Assessment, fill out the form below.

Learn more about NEC’s back up, recovery and business continuity offerings and download the white paper.

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Create the Perfect Cloud Solution for your Organization

Cloud computing used to be the “wave of the future” but now small businesses and large enterprises alike are realizing the benefits. Instead of replacing aging infrastructure or making large purchases as the business grows, cloud services allows scalability and availability at a lower operating cost. Small businesses enjoy enterprise grade features and mobility with the use of cloud computing, allowing them to do more with less cost, less maintenance and a smaller staff. Large enterprises can grow exponentially, deploying large systems on a scalable platform that’s available when needed.

A cloud solution allows organizations to revolutionize how they deploy business applications, communicate and store data with greater flexibility and scale. Businesses that have previously managed their own infrastructure may be hesitant to subscribe to a public cloud model. A private cloud or a hybrid solution, may be a good alternative for those businesses looking to maintain control over security and expenses while offering the latest technologies.

Built on our award-winning IT infrastructure, NEC offers flexible solutions for organizations considering a private, trusted cloud or hybrid cloud solution.

Communicate Better with Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

UCaaS, or Unified Communications as a Service, offers tools for businesses seeking to move communications, messaging, chat, video collaboration, contact centers and more into the cloud. UCaaS is customizable, allowing organizations of any size to scale up or down, depending on seasonal demand, so that businesses are only paying for what they’re using. Lower up-front costs, minimal maintenance and extensive mobility allows your IT staff to be proactive and efficient, anywhere and at any time.

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE Business Cloud Services delivers dynamic flexible UCaaS options, using public, private or a hybrid cloud, and can also leverage your current on-premises PBX investment. NEC’s cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions brings value and, if needed, improves upon the existing IT infrastructure.

UNIVERGE SV9100 BLUE

Straight out-of-the-box, UNIVERGE SV9100 BLUE delivers hybrid cloud communications for businesses wanting the ease and cost-effectiveness of a cloud solution while still maintaining an on-premises system. Reliable and secure, the SV9100 BLUE provides unified communications and mobility applications with a minimal investment.

Hosted Telephony

NEC’s hosted telephony solution reduces the need for in-house maintenance by a telephony support team. Free up space in the data center and management costs for scalable features such as call recording, automated attendant, mobility and call transfers from a landline to a cell or a computer.

UNIVERGE BLUE SIP Trunking

Route calls over an IP network instead of traditional phone lines with NEC’s SIP Trunking. For businesses with multiple offices, SIP Trunking turns voice into an application, creating the appearance of a single location without the cost of extensive infrastructure.

UNIVERGE BLUE Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

Capitalize on customer interactions and let them engage with you on their terms, from anywhere, at any time by providing multiple avenues of communication through social media, SMS, webchat and more with NEC’s CCaaS. Customers speak to a real person, specifically selected to meet their needs through skills-based routing, while allowing high-priority clients to skip to the front of the line. Additionally, NEC’s CCaaS provides metrics and workforce management solutions to improve the effectiveness of your customer service team.

UNIVERGE BLUE Team Collaboration

Improve company-wide communication and collaboration with NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE Team Collaboration. Enabling users to participate in private one-to-one, group, or company-wide conversations. Communications are streamlined and can follow users to whatever device they are using at the time.

Unified Threat Management

NEC’s Unified Threat Management monitors and manages threats between the local network and the local gateway. The appliance connects to the cloud for up-to-the-minute virus definition updates and can also be used for keyword filtering, URL filtering and notifications when a threat is detected.

UNIVERGE BLUE Video Collaboration

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE Video Collaboration delivers a reliable video hosting solution for businesses. Powered by Vidyo, this scalable communications solution offers 4K quality, multi-party conferencing, crystal clear picture and sound from any device and location at an affordable price.

Backup as a Service (BaaS)

In a sobering 2018 statistic, 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within six months of the disaster. As cloud environments grow, the need to securely back up and manage data that is delivered in the cloud and not cloud-delivered has also grown. Considering the threat of natural disasters, power outages, cyberattacks and man-made errors, NEC offers powerful Backup as a Service (BaaS) solutions to mitigate the risk of data loss and save businesses money on the investment of backup infrastructure.

Built on NEC’s award-winning distributed grid storage platform, HYDRAstor®, placed in highly regulated, compliant and secure IronMountain® datacenters and using industry-leading Commvault® backup software, BaaS delivers powerful performance and security. Whether backing up between datacenters on site, straight to the cloud or in virtual or physical environments, organizations can expect cost-effective managed backup 7x24x365, advanced encryption, compliance and easy scalability.

NEC’s UNIVERGE BLUE Cloud Services allows your organization to grow and deliver a reliable and secure experience with minimal investment. Customize the solution that’s perfect for your organization. Contact an NEC Solutions Expert to learn more.

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The 3 R’s In Disaster Preparedness

Few want to be ‘that person’ … the one whose phone rings first when some aspect of the organization’s critical infrastructure fails. Hoping for the best is all well and good. Even planning for the worst only goes so far. There are just too many variables in preventing unexpected outages to be totally failsafe. Yes, there are some situations that can be planned for. But the severity of even known concerns can mean the difference between a manageable and challenging scenario.

When disaster does strike, it is all about recovering to a state of normalcy quickly and minimizing any impact to the end user experience. This applies to almost every aspect in risk management, whether it be for a physical location or operational infrastructure.

Here at NEC, disaster preparedness can be broken down into 3 core competencies – otherwise known as the 3 R’s.

Resiliency

Resiliency
Fully redundant architecture that supports and runs in lockstep with mission critical infrastructure.

Information must be protected yet accessible before and after the restoration of essential services.

Our high availability infrastructure works to deliver a multi-tiered resilient environment that recovers quickly should disaster strike through the use of our Five9s Fault Tolerant servers, disaster recovery software and SAN and Scale-Out Grid Storage solutions.

Our Fault Tolerant servers and ExpressCluster® software are viable options for effective redundancy protection of physical security applications and possible hardware, software and site infrastructure failure.

Robustness

Robustness
Simplified environments based on stable, flexible foundations that elevate security and responsiveness.

To alleviate the risk of data loss and the expense of investing in backup management infrastructure, third-party hosting is a viable alternative while SDN solutions deliver greater oversight for companies interested in keeping control in-house.

NEC is uniquely positioned to deliver Backup-as-a-Service. As the first technology infrastructure provider to join Iron Mountain’s Data Center Marketplace, we can help protect and deliver accessibility of the data stores we host through Iron Mountain’s secure, compliant and energy efficient data centers in North Virginia (VA10) and West Pennsylvania (WPA1).

With so much depending on the network, our software defined networking software and switches can deliver granular, end-to-end network visibility and administrative insight from one central point to promote continuous supervision and greater operability.

Relevance

Relevance
Deliverables that best adapt to the needs of internal and external users through optimized experiences.

For optimum protection of those on-site and within related or nearby offices, emergency protocols can be a vital life line.

NEC’s highly accurate facial recognition technology provide better situational awareness through the use of identification matching software and video surveillance for greater on-site safety and more appropriate course of action.

Where large numbers of people must be reached quickly, our mass communications solutions can send voice, email and text messages or a combination of all so people stay informed and remain vigilant.

Check out NEC Retail solutions to learn more.

Our enterprise security solutions provide a comprehensive package of options that range from streamlining visitor handling, providing employees with a secure environment through physical and visual safeguards and helping to make your critical processes highly available.

Don’t wait for that next phone call or incidence. Let NEC provide a roadmap on critical IT, communications and on-site recovery that will help your organization’s preparedness in disaster recovery.

Get started today.