Recently in backup Category

Speaking with Peter Davis, Partner Channel Manager in the Southeast for XO, about MPLS and HIPAA. XO recently held a webinar describing how their MPLS Solution can enable healthcare organizations to be HIPAA compliant.

The wording here is important. Transport is neither compliant or not. It is the end devices and users that must be HIPAA compliant. In other words, how the data is handled end-to-end has to be compliant, not the pieces and parts. 

When speaking with Hospital HIPAA Administrators it is important to remember that part of compliance is security and part is procedure. The procedure part has to do with how all medical records (physical and virtual) are handled and secured, whether on-premise, in transit, at a data center, ona  server or in a file cabinet.

With off-site data storage, the best solution for access is a private line, a Layer 2 VPN, or an MPLS network. Why? Segmentation of traffic. Security of data flow. Less chance for a lapse in security. 

The data needs to be securely stored and backed up. EMR firms have to sell a fairly expensive proposition due to all the safeguards and redundancy that goes with accessing medical records from a remote server. 

In many ways, the telecom agent can sell numerous pieces of the puzzle through XO (or other carriers or VAR's). 

• The transport - private line, metro Ethernet, Layer 2 VPN, or MPLS.
• The data center - collocation for servers and networking gear
• Data storage and backup

HIPAA is more involved with procedures in place (and to be followed) on the storage, access and security of medical records  than on the technology used to secure, store or transport those same medical records.

If you are looking for more info on MPLS, XO has an MPLS video series on YouTube and TCA has a stored webinar for its members on its website.

I'm in Atlanta speaking at the Microcorp One-on-One event about Trends in 2010. The three trends that I see for agents are the following: Applications, Quality of Service (QOS), and Mobile Broadband (MBB). But they are kind of inter-dependent. Ubiquious broadband leads to innovative uses and applications. Applications like on smartphones lead to a greater need for mobile broadband networks.

Mobile Broadband is growing. Smartphones are replacing cellular handsets. Social networks are moving to mobile devices so people can Facebook and Tweet. RIM's Blackberry brought us mobile email, but it is a standard on many phones now. Netbooks and data cards are presenting the US cellular companies with some fits. They like the additional revenue, but have to keep dropping billions on the network backhaul and capacity upgrades. (And another $45B+ on the upgrade to LTE/4G).

All this means that there are new uses for the mobile broadband, like the Kindle. Sprint's Wispernet allows Amazon to instantly download books, magazines, newspapers and blogs to Kindle devices. Machine-to-machine devices can utilize the cellular data network to provide connectivity for ATM machines, security cameras, and a host of other devices that need to communicate with a NOC or remote server.

All of this is a cycle of applications driving network usage. Ubiquious broadband driving more apps. It's one reason that the FCC needs to maintain open network and Net Neutrality guidelines in place.

Applications - like email, databases, office suites, CRM - are creating a demand for managed services, such as an outsourced IT department. In addition, businesses are looking at the Cloud - moving applications to a data center for redundancy, security, and availability - as a way to save money and stop worrying about the IT department. With applications being delivered in the Cloud or by way of SAAS or even Virtualization, Agents have a chance to offer more than just Internet Access or WAN circuits, like private line. Agents can sell Layer 2 to Layer 7 - pipe to apps. It's a way to get deeper into accounts. It's a way to offer a complete solution. It's a way to deliver on the label of Trusted Advisor.

Applications are driving sales. Voice and email are just the primary apps. Business critical data is also driving mobile broadband. Ubiquious broadband is allowing for innovative ways of accessing data. The problem becomes reliable access to the data. That's where Quality of Service comes in. QOS on the WAN is what is needed to access data reliably and quickly. The MPLS trigger is the Class of Service reliability and prioritization of data over the network. This is paramount for businesses running a truly converged network with video, database, VoIP, email and Internet riding the same pipes. WAN Optimization is selling due to the cost containment and the performance enhancement. Big bang for the buck.

So the agents can sell mobile broadband, applications via Virtualization or SAAS, and add QOS to the WAN to provide reliable access to these business critical data.

Because broadband is so slow in the states, Amazon has resorted to allowing companies to mail in their portable devices for data storage and upload. According to Cloudave, it could take "82 days (with 1.54 Mbps T1 connection) to migrate one terabyte of data with 80% network utilization."  So "Amazon has resorted to old fashioned approach from the previous eras. Users can mail Amazon their data in one of the supported portable storage devices and Amazon will transfer it to users' AWS account from within Amazon's high speed internal network."  Sad really.

Network World has a story about how an online storage site, Linkup, formerly known as MediaMax, shut down this week after 45% of the data was lost. Who's fault is it? Well, the article tries to figure that out.

As we have seen, outages are everywhere - Amazon, Google, etc. Five Nines is difficult especially now. My thoughts are that there are more hackers worldwide with broadband. More compromised machines. Less security precautions. Buggy, bloated software that goes unpatched. Less common sense.

All these free services have a cost to deliver. If they don't have a revenue model that is working (like Google or Amazon), then how can they afford to provide secure services to you for free? As we have seen, even GOOG and AMAZ who not only can afford it, hire top notch talent to manage it have issues that cannot be avoided. Power outages. Broken parts. Redundant failures. As any data center tech can tell you, these things happen.

A CLEC client called today with a DS3 card outage on his class 5 switch - and the redundant switch-over wouldn't work. What can you do?

Plan for the worst. Test. Communicate with your customers in the case of an event.

We live in the Digital Age. Digital music, photos, e-cards, downloaded movies, etc. The mementos of life are now just electrons. Not many cards, letters, film. Nothing tangible.

Here's the kicker: Most people don;t have back-up either.

If you buy 100 CD's and strip off your MP3's and your iPod breaks or gets lost, you still have the CD's. When your hard drive fails, will you have DVD back-ups of your wedding photos? Your 40th birthday party? Or will it all be lost when BIOS can't find the drive? If your cell phone gets lost or broken, you have lost your address book. And in some cases have no way to call people since we are not dialing numbers any more - but contact links in the digital address book.

Despite Katrina, 9/11, and dozens of other weather based disasters, people still don't back-up data. One reason is that back-up is neither automatic nor easy.

To back-up an 80GB hard drive (the first time) using an ADSL line at the standard 378k upstream will take hours. Even storing your 2GB Outlook PST file can take a while. Add in the expense along with the hassle and the it-won't-happen-to-me mentality and you can see why there are so many back-up providers. None have become the Vonage of back-up. You know, huge ad spend with annoying music to explain what and why to back-up. The NYT had an article about one provider who I have never heard of: SugarSync.

Back-up is Insurance against the very real possibility of data loss. Hard drives do fail. Cell phones do get lost, stolen, and broken.

Back up is peace of mind. At least use a flash drive or external hard drive.