Fujitsu delivers Cloud Backup as a Service for hybrid IT

Fujitsu has today announced the release of its Cloud Backup as a Service Rapid Recovery Appliance.

The new appliance enhances Fujitsu's Cloud Backup as a Service (BaaS) solution, which aims to deliver faster, more resilient and more robust security features.

The company says the pre-configured solution provides a flexible data protection approach, which is needed in a hybrid IT model where business processes are supported by a mixture of on-premise and external cloud services.

It combines the benefits of a backup and recovery appliance with cloud-based backup strategies, including pay-as-you-grow pricing and data security, ensuring organisation's data is secure and readily recoverable, no matter whether the application resides in the cloud or on traditional IT.

"Speedy recovery is key following the loss or corruption of critical data," the company says in a statement.

It says the solution is deployed on-premise to ensure recovery at Local Area Network (LAN) speeds, which are faster than cloud-based data transfers.

" This new Fujitsu BaaS solution automatically replicates data to the secure cloud for offsite data protection and allows for the rapid recovery of recent local backup data while using secure cloud-based services to hold backup data in an easily-accessible vault," Fujitsu says.

Due to the use of advanced deduplication from technology partner Seagate, Fujitsu can minimise the amount of data transferred via the network, while sophisticated data compression ensures minimal storage footprints, helping reduce space requirements and associated costs, the company explains.

"With an ever-increasing trend toward consuming IT via a cloud service delivery model, IT buyers are focused on easy-to-integrate cloud offerings that combine the benefits of cloud with existing assets," says James Jefferd, global offering manager, Fujitsu.

 "The Fujitsu BaaS Rapid Recovery Appliance does this and means clients can replace traditional on-site, tape-based backup with disk-based solutions that are agile, scalable, simple to use and secure.

"Combining the capability of the Fujitsu cloud-based service with the new appliance delivers a very flexible backup architecture that can be managed from anywhere yet be highly distributed.

According to Gartner analyst Dave Russell, public cloud options are becoming increasingly considered for server workloads, especially for remote-office and departmental computing environments. "While most organizations cite concerns over security as their top cloud issue, the greater issue is often latency, as data encryption and key management are well-established methods for protecting off-site backup data," Russell says.

"This means that an on-premises, local copy of the data, or at least the most recent backup of the most critical data, is best practice.

"Thus, a disk-to-disk-to-cloud (D2D2C) model is emerging.

Michael J. Palmer SVP, GM EVault a Seagate Company, adds: "This offering combines both global reach and proven cloud expertise.

"Fujitsu has deeply integrated Seagate's market-leading backup and recovery solutions into a winning combination for customers.

Protecting every link in the data-protection chain, Fujitsu Cloud BaaS end-to-end security addresses front-end, over-the-wire and at-rest encryption for local and cloud-based backup vaults.

The comprehensive 256-bit AES encryption ensures data security at all times. Data is encrypted in-flight and at-rest in the onsite appliance backup vault and cloud backup vault.

The BaaS Rapid Recovery Appliance also provides automated, continuous cloud replication, helping reduce costs and resource requirements while also leveraging Fujitsu's global cloud capabilities.

The Fujitsu Global Support Model provides customers with expertise and support in maximising the benefits of this cloud and on-premise backup and recovery solution via a 24x7 service desk.