Society today is a demander of speed and the internet is no exception. Google says that just milliseconds subconsciously deter people from staying on a webpage. In fact the search giant is so interested in speeding up the web that they’ve pinpointed this as their major focus and launched the Google speed website.

So, why speed? The basic fact is that a speedy service gives people a great customer experience. People do not like to wait – think about this next time you’re in a long queue at a shop.

The difference online is that it is much easier to go elsewhere.

For example, you’re on a website looking for garden furniture and you’ve found the double outdoor swing chair you want but the payment page is loading very slowly.

Firstly, this looks very unprofessional – broken links and slow pages don’t inspire your customers to view you as a trusted retailer. When 80% of Brits don’t trust companies to look after and protect their data why give them any further reasons to doubt you?

Secondly, online you can quite easily click back to Google and buy the second double outdoor swing chair on the list instead. Online your direct competitors are always your next door neighbours – which is not the case on the high street.

But don’t by any means let this increased level of competition make you shy away from the internet. This is the major platform of our time and every business, large or small, now needs to have an online presence. To satisfy your customers you need that presence to be fast. What’s stopping you?

The UKFastTrack offers budding entrepreneurs a golden opportunity to give their business idea the best possible start by providing £15,000 worth of top-class hosting support. This includes the use of our revolutionary new SEO Servers, which are built for speed, and our industry-leading technical and marketing support.

We believe the SEO Servers can make the difference between success and failure and the web is buzzing with excitement amongst would-be internet entrepreneurs wanting to test it out. For a taste of the interest check out the UKFast discussion page on Twitter. News of the competition is also spreading amongst online business media as a result of our high-profile launch at the British Grand Prix last week: http://www.startups.co.uk/6678842909712360167/hunt-is-on-for-next-web-success.html.

For anyone not yet up to speed on the rules of the competition, the UKFastTrack will see ten finalists selected from an open application process by a UKFast panel in September. The competing candidates will then get six months to build up their businesses using the power of the SEO Servers. The winner will be the business that enjoys the largest growth over the duration of the competition and their prize will be a further six months free hosting with UKFast.

Applications are already flooding in, so to make sure you don’t miss out on a chance to kick-start your business with free hosting from the industry leader, go to http://www.ukfast.co.uk/seo-hosting-server.html#5 now and fill in an application form.

For more information on how the SEO Server will transform the face of online business, visit http://www.ukfast.co.uk/seo-hosting-server.html.

UKFast is at the British Formula 1 Grand Prix today for the first of three days of fun with clients. However, it’s not just about enjoying top class motor sport. The fastest racing cars in the world also form the perfect backdrop to UKFast’s launch of the fastest servers available in the UK.

Today UKFast’s senior management have unveiled the SEO Server, a custom designed hosting unit that is perfect for powering internet business growth. The new hardware, which is guaranteed to revolutionise business online, has everything an operation needs to quickly make a success of their web venture.

It’s most important attribute is its fantastic speed. And that means the SEO Server is perfect for quickly establishing high Google rankings and a large, loyal customer base.

Why is this? Well Google rewards websites that deliver a positive user experience and the search giant rates quick loading sites as the most important factor in a good experience. Similarly, customers are more likely to stay loyal to an online business that gives them a consistently swift service. In fact did you know that a 30% increase in page load speed can result in a 30% increase in customers? Or that 51% of web customers abandon slow loading pages?

We are excited about the difference the SEO Server will have and to make sure everyone knows about it we have also launched today the UKFastTrack, a search for the next big online business venture.

The UKFastTrack will give ten entrepreneurs six months free hosting with a SEO Server and associated support worth in the region of £15,000. The ten finalists will be selected from an open application process which starts today! The winner will be the business that enjoys the largest sustained growth over the duration of the competition and their prize will be a further six months free hosting with UKFast.

For more information on how the SEO Server is set to transform the face of online business or to enter the UKFastTrack competition, visit http://www.ukfast.co.uk/seo-hosting-server.html.

It takes individuals of many different natures for a business to operate successfully. Every person has a talent and personality that lends that individual to a specific role.

Some people are great organisers who exude practicality, others may be more sporadic but with a creativity that breaks down boundaries and gets them noticed. Each individual person has a different quality to offer your organisation. But according to a book I just read (Good to Great by Jim Collins) the challenge in driving successful business is first getting the right people on the bus and then getting these people in the right seats.

To me this makes complete sense - when people are in the right seats they do their best work. When they’re utilised wholly, they’re more passionate about their work. Take a walk down memory lane and I’ll take a bet that at school your favourite subject was the one you were best at. Or now, in the kitchen, your favourite dish is the one you’re best at cooking - because passion breeds expertise.

At UKFast our recruitment method is threefold in order to get the right people in the right positions. We recruit from interviews, psychometric testing and then a three month training period is embarked upon to make sure our new recruits fit into their team.

From experience we can confirm that this method works. And it works well. There are many different people at UKFast and each and every person has something to offer. We make the greatest effort to get them in the right role.

Seriously, the Economist Intelligence Unit global liveability survey (a very highly regarded authority) has classed Manchester as the top UK city to live and work in. Out of a list of 140 worldwide cities scrutinised in the review, Manchester came 46^th, while London was only 51^st. Vancouver was top with Vienna a close second. Manchester also beat New York, Milan and Rome.

The news is fantastic to read as it helps to further put Manchester on the map. At UKFast we have been at the heart of the digital revolution in Manchester and have been talking our great city up for many years. So this is a great help to that cause.

Manchester is definitely the exciting focus for the bourgeoning North West hot bed of media and online talent and business. Soon the city will welcome cohorts of BBC departments to its new Media City in the heavily redeveloped Salford Quays, while the city centre is already the home to many major international companies including Adidas, AIG, Bank of New York and Google.

The city is also a great place to live with a fantastic restaurant and night-life culture, iconic music venues and excellent sports and leisure facilities.

So a combination of Manchester and our newly achieved lofty position of 31 in The Times Best Companies to Work For list makes UKFast a great place to be in 2009.

Source: TheBusinessDesk.com

It all started so well with the Lions’ 20 points up after 20 minutes against the Free State Cheetahs. However, the home side stormed back and in the end the Lions held on by just 2 points - 26 to 24.

Sale Sharks Andrew Sheridan once again put in a powerful performance and was one of the more consistent Lions players but once again playing for a faltering side will no doubt leave him concerned about test selection.

Also, I would just like to mention Mark Cueto. In all the Lions excitement I forgot to mention the Sharks’ speedy winger was in action for England at the weekend in a rare outing at Old Trafford.

It was perhaps fitting that at the footballing ‘theatre of dreams’ Cueto created two tries for teammate Delon Armitage using his kicking skills. It was just like watching Ronaldo in the white of England!

Congratulations to England for their impressive 37 - 15 win over World Cup semi-finalists Argentina and to all the organisers and sponsors for bringing a successful rugby road show to the city of Manchester.

Apparently, we have become quite savvy about spotting email threats, so the scammers and malware purveyors are turning to new fertile ground on sites such as Facebook and Bebo.

Advice for staying safe when social networking ranges from not responding to unusual email alerts, to not accepting friend requests from people you don’t know. However, this week I read an article which highlighted a much more fundamental potential security risk users could be exposing themselves to.

The risk is identity theft and it is all to do with what personal details we put on our profiles. Many organisations, such as some banks, rely on our personal information to verify who we are. Things such as date of birth, middle name, pet’s name etc.

This is exactly the sort of information we offer up on our social networking personal pages. On Facebook for example, you can have your full date of birth (and therefore age) displayed.  Cyber criminals can easily harvest this information to attempt to commit identity fraud. So the obvious advice here is to not put your full date of birth on the profile page.

Taking the point into a wider context, identity fraud is a serious matter for businesses. Companies have a responsibility to protect their customers’ sensitive details, while on the other side customers will not give their business to those they cannot trust.

As a hosting provider, we at UKFast hold very sensitive data, so our security needs to be impeccable. We operate state-of-the-art data centres that boast best-of-breed multi-layered security measures and we have a unique password protection system in place for every client. So we wont be asking our clients their date of birth!

Sheridan did play in the British Lion’s victorious first game but the result was far from the comfortable romp expected.

So Sheridan and his teammates from that first game know they need a big performance against the Free State Cheetahs tomorrow to enhance their chances of making the test side.

And expect Sherry to do just that as he is a Shark that is not used to taking a backward step (or should that be a backward swim!).

UKFast, the Sale Sharks’ new main sponsor, will be urging Sheridan on when he takes to the field in Bloemfontein. Having been a key focal point for our sponsorship and rebranding campaign (see here) he is very popular with the cohort of rugby fans at the office.

Come on Sheridan find your roar this Saturday!

P.S. - A little indulgent but I could not resist drawing on the commonalities between the Lions and UKFast this weekend. As the Lions prepare to further their campaign against the Cheetahs, we are continuing our high profile ‘Cheetah’ campaign on the subject of the importance of speed for web businesses. Read more on our campaign here.

Google, in fact, suggests that speed is the most important factor of all in determining search engine results making it therefore vital for online businesses to ensure they have the server infrastructure that can deliver consistent top performances.

Apparently, the speed that your website loads by can vary from browser to browser, that is why the major players have been battling it out in the quickness stakes with Chrome and Internet Explored both bringing out recent research that suggests that they are the speediest.

However, the browser selected is irrelevant if web traders opt for second rate hosting. UKFast prides itself on having the fastest network in the UK. If you want to check out the speed of your site to see if your business is being harmed by a lack of server grunt visit the UKFast home page at www.ukfast.co.uk.

Meanwhile, Google’s Chrome continues to battle with the likes of the afore-mentioned IE, Firefox and Safari for browser supremacy. User reviews indicate that Chrome has got the speed x-factor but it still lacks the usability and toys of the more mature offerings.

In May last year there was uproar when Google announced that it was changing its rules to allow paid search ad bidders to bid on rival trademarks. The development was highly controversial because it effectively allowed companies to highjack the traffic heading for their rivals, thus undermining the rivals’ hard earned market profile.

One of the few crumbs of comfort the 2008 changes offered was that bidders would not be allowed to use rival trademark words in their Google search ads. So at least a searcher would not be confused by seeing the company name they wanted in what turned out to be a rival’s ad and link.

But that crumb has now disintegrated. Now barely a year later and Google has decided to flex its might again by allowing the use of trademarked words in ads. This means firms now face the prospect of Google searchers inputting their name and getting a top result containing said name prominently BUT the link will be to a bitter rival!

How many searchers will just click the link oblivious to the intricacies of the situation?

The developments represent a fresh round of worry for businesses and potentially more Google advertising expenses. So how can the search titan justify it?

Well, Google says that it all goes to giving the user a better experience and the accuracy of search returns will actually be even better. Part of this argument has merit. The new rules will allow retailers to use the trademark names of the brands they sell, so better representing their products to searchers.

However, many would argue the real reason lies within the recent concession by Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s chief technology officer, that Google has clearly won the search engine game.

The defeatist revelation comes as Balogh says that Yahoo is looking into social networking as a new expansion frontier. It also shows that Google’s market dominance is such that it has the luxury of dictating terms to business clients.

Whichever way you see it, the result can be said to be another positive step for Google!

The agreement is a historic one, involving a seven figure sum for a three year deal. It is also a very exciting one for us at UKFast because it means our brand new logo will be on the chests of the likes of Dwayne Peel, Mathew Tait, Ben Cohen and Andrew Sheridan every game next year.

The shirt has already been designed and it can be seen, along with a wealth of other interesting information, on our specially created online press area at: http://www.ukfast.co.uk/sale-sharks-press-area.html.

The shirt colours and design synergise with our new logo to make the whole kit a moving reminder of UKFast and our new brand identity of professionalism, technical excellence and speed.

The deal represents a new milestone for us and a new dawn for the Sharks. For our part, we are very pleased that despite the difficult general economic conditions our business has continued to deliver strong returns so that we can confidently invest this significant sum into sponsoring Sale.

As for the Sharks, the French revolution is over. Saint Andre, Chabal and co have departed. Welshman Kingsley Jones has taken on the top job, England legend Jason Robinson has returned as a coach and the club have a four year plan to recapture the top spot in the Premiership.

All of this adds up to exciting times for Sale Sharks and UKFast, and as main sponsors we will be able to share the experience with 28 guests at every home match! Bring on September!

But I wasn’t sure. Twitter’s format seemed so limited that I struggled to see the commercial viability. Many companies have a Twitter presence. In fact figures now suggest that the majority of firms now have some sort of Twitter account. But is this just lip service?

Others have their doubts too. In its April edition EN magazine argues that Twitter does not offer the marketer anything new and that phone and email are still stronger communication tools.

Then there is the debate over the future of Twitter itself. New research suggests that after the first month Twitter loses about 60% of its new users. This attrition rate is much higher than for other forms of social media and it worryingly suggests that the rapid blogging site’s user numbers may be widely overstated.

There are many well know companies with Twitter profiles but these are set up as free accounts just as an individual would use the service. The do not represent income for Twitter.

So, as one commentator has stated, is Twitter trying to saddle the commercial horse after it has bolted out of the stable? If companies are happy to use Twitter as a marketing message board for free and with concerns over real user numbers, can Twitter really be effectively commercialised.

Maybe the venture capitalists backing the service also don’t really believe its commercial potential. Maybe they are just hedging their bets on someone like Facebook offering to buy Twitter for big money with its own misguided belief that it can generate revenues from Twitter!

So I remain unconvinced. Just because an online platform proves popular does not necessarily mean it will be commercial success. If anyone, the real winners are likely to be the businesses that use Twitter for free to post links back to their real online commercial tool - their own website.

But - what really is ‘cloud’? It’s been defined by many in the press as a ‘new era’ of computing - but this is almost ironic as it’s seems the perceived solution that most are talking of is much of a resurgence of way back when computing was predominantly mainframes located centrally in a datacenter style setup.

Either way - this new concept is very wide-ranging in its definition, depending on who you speak to or which company or offer you are reading about.

In its simplest form, cloud computing can be defined as “a service being hosted and delivered via the internet to the consumer”. There is clearly much more that can be built on top of this but the essence of it shouldn’t be confusing.

To understand more about the new concepts behind this latest incarnation of computing we need to look at how they help us deliver our solutions and services to consumers.

That’s where the definition of consuming anything ‘as a service’ comes in to play and, given this, you may well have heard of ‘SaaS’ of one of the most widely known ‘as a service’ concepts - ‘Software as a Service’. This is a specific definition for softwarebeing consumed over the internet.

To look in more detail at what we can do to build solutions which are based on these concepts, we need to break them down in to 3 core areas - which I’ll call pillars.

These pillars, which support the concept of cloud computing, are all independent and can support the concept individually. However, full cloud computing would necessitate all three pillars to be in place to some level.

infrastructure as a Service or IaaS.

This is a definition given to the software, hardware and fully managed environment in which a computing infrastructure is contained.

As an example, Hosting companies typically provide servers for customers to host services, websites, exchange, SQL etc upon.

This approach abstracts away from the physical servers and the principle becomes selling the utility of the infrastructure to the customer allowing them to focus entirely upon their service or product.

platform as a Service, PaaS.

Again, this definition is based on abstracting away from physical servers but also abstracting away from the platform - Operating Systems and other platform-oriented technologies like .NET or Java etc.

This would, for example, enable developers to deploy to the cloud and completely remove the considerations of resilience, reliability and scalability by abstracting away from the platform and the underlying physical infrastructure.

software as a Service, SaaS.

As mentioned earlier in the example of what the ‘as a Service’ concept is. It’s worth noting that the end game of the IaaS, PaaS and SaaS pillars is to provide an internet consumable service. As such, SaaS is often the end point for all of these concepts.

pillars

So - that all suggests that each pillar mentioned is a pre-requisite of the other and, we’ve already suggested that each pillar also individually supports the concept of ‘Cloud Computing’. So which is it? Do all have to be in place or is one fundamentally core?

Actually - that either all 3 pillars are can be present or just one.

A true end to end cloud computing solution would require abstraction at all layers to provide cloud-like functionality across the board. Equally, cloud-like functionality can be provided by just one of these pillars and that solution would equally be deemed ‘cloud computing’.

The 3 pillars of Cloud Computing

What’s clear, however, is that there are 3 key elements of the consumer experience. The cloud offerings IaaS, PaaS & SaaS are essentially the equivalent of physical server, operating system and the software product being consumed respectively.

For any deployed solution, each element does depend on some other process providing the other two and of key importance here is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be an ‘as a service’ / cloud computing process which does this.

leveraging the Microsoft Stack

The great thing about all of this is that it is possible to create the IaaS cloud computing layer out of the core Microsoft stack of products. Below are detailed the key softwares and licenses necessary to produce an IaaS/cloud environment:

• Hyper-V
  • Virtualization technology enabling maximization of usage of physical server resources.
  • Key enabler for other technologies in the stack.
• Windows Datacenter Edition per processor license
  • Licensing model allows unlimited virtualization rights for anonymous operating system environments on a physical server.
• SMSE - System Center Management Suite Enterprise license
  • A compilation of Microsoft licensing enabling management, protection and maintenance of server workloads - specifically targeted to aid virtualized scenarios
  • Operations Manager - monitoring
  • Configuration Manager -deployment and configuration
  • Virtual Machine Manager - management of the virtual environment
  • Data Protection Manager - data protection and backup
• PowerShell
  • Powerful extensible interface to all latest Microsoft applications allows custom code to be developed to automate systems.

UKFast and cloud computing

Leveraging these technologies to produce the next generation of Hosting Platform is one of the key aims of UKFast and there will be developments over the coming months - watch this space!

For more info on PowerShell, see James O’Neill’s blog. For info on the SMSE license, see my previous blog on the topic. Hyper-V and virtualization, see the MS Virtualization team blog or my previous blog on Hyper-V.

In terms of pure visitor numbers the likes of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are undoubted giants of the internet but all are yet to successfully convert their popularity into commercial gain.

YouTube for example is predicted to have 375 million unique visitors in 2009 by Credit Suisse but the Google owned video streaming site is also predicted to make a loss of $470m by the same banking organisation.

Not the idea ecommerce model!

Making money from sites such as YouTube, Facebook etc. is immediately hampered by their high running costs. If you have millions of visitors requesting video or interactive features you need lots of servers and lots of broadband capacity.

Going back to the YouTube figures, Credit Suisse calculates that it will spend $360 million on bandwidth costs this year because of 75 billion video stream requests.

The other side to the uneven equation is the lack of commercial leverage. YouTube gets money from in-video ads and from broadcasters to host their content. But this has so far been more limited than expected and disagreements have resulted in many content providers pulling out of deals.

Meanwhile, Twitter is just embarking on tentative steps to commercialise its offering. This exercise will be fascinating to watch as Twitter is arguably a more restricted format than YouTube.

And then there is the dirty phrase in social media of ‘paid-for services’. Whispers have started up about Facebook possibly becoming a paid for site if bought out.

This is the most direct form of leveraging income as it charges the user not partner advertisers and in theory it could deliver huge incomes. However, sites would take a big gamble with this strategy. Social media users seem to hold strongly to the idea that they should be free to the end user and are likely to, at worst rebel and boycott, at least drift away to a free rival. Look at friendsreunited.com for an example.

No doubt Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion with an eye to raking in the revenue. Facebook was similarly valued (at one point last year) at $15 billion based on theoretical commercial value.

The reality is social media have yet to deliver a successful commercial model. Can it be done? And who will be the first to succeed?

The golden ticket continued into the 90s with the Windows series of operating systems and desktop applications becoming not just the most popular options but the accepted standard. And now into a third decade there are many computer users the world over that are probably unaware that there is an alternative to Windows, Word and Outlook.

Yes, Microsoft has been the archetypal business success story of finding an underserved market, developing the right product, securing a dominant share and then convincing the buyer that it is the market. Those who tried to compete were crushed under the Microsoft juggernaut as it continued along its path of irresistible force.

Until now that is! Microsoft’s mega truck is still going strong of course but now a small dent has appeared in its bodywork in the form of Encarta’s demise. The software giant has announced that Encarta will be taken offline in the autumn in the wake of the realisation that it cannot compete with internet source such as Wikipedia.

It is not a massive blow for Microsoft as Encarta was a tiny piece of the puzzle, but the symbolism is big. For the first time it is Microsoft’s product that is out off date and obsolete. What it used to regularly do to others has now been done to it and finally Microsoft has found itself behind the innovation curve.

Microsoft is still going strong, with a raft of quality products but the days of total domination are probably now confined to history, as will be Encarta soon.

Reading is a Software Engineers most powerful weapon

I have been a little busy recently down here at UKFast, working on some ‘top secret’ projects soon to be unleashed upon the world. Whilst I obviously can’t divulge what these projects entail a lot of focus has gone into the way we design and write code. This got me thinking about what must be the core skills that every software developer should have and rehearse.

To me reading is by far the most important skill a developer should have. I am not talking about ploughing your way through a Java Developer’s Guide or PHP Cookbook. I am thinking more about books that make you think, that make you question and help you to understand real life scenarios and problems. Your language of choice is just a tool, like a pencil, a hammer or a finely tuned industrial laser cutter. Consider going to your local DIY or hardware store to purchase a hammer, you would expect the assistant to know exactly what hammers are available and to be able to roughly be able to guide you on their uses. You wouldn’t expect them to be able to forge a perfectly crafted sword in front of you. So why should a programmer read non language specific material?

I think that by highlighting here why I became a programmer should help to make my argument a little clearer. I was an 80s child and grew up in a time when computers exploded into mainstream society, my first experience of a computer was when my Dad brought home an Acorn BBC Microcomputer. I had great fun experimenting and writing little calculator programs in BASIC but I was far too young to appreciate the value of what I was doing. It was just a game. It wasn’t until many years later a Physics lecturer tasked me to build an accurate model of our solar system using FORTRAN 95. Then it clicked, a little light lit up… you can choose your own clichéd metaphor here! Modeling and problem solving, that is what programming is for.

OK, lets get back to my point, a developer needs to know far more than code syntax and control structures, they need to know how to embrace and break down a problem, how to relate it to real life situations and their own personal experiences. A developer’s primary goal should be to find a problem, solve it into a process then finally break that process down into the most efficient and simple solution possible. The second part of this is where reading is very important. The more detail and and depth a developer understands the problem they are attempting the more efficiently and accurately they will solve it. As an analogy you could be trying to describe the flow of an incompressible fluid, a secondary school algebra user would approximate their description using a simple Navier-Stokes equation, whilst a university physics student would accurately describe the flow using differential equations. Both appear to describe the situation but would you prefer an approximation or the exact answer?

Non-technical types find it hard to appreciate the level of understanding a developer must have to be able to solve the problem given to them. A good example would be if a developer were tasked to build a piece of accounting software. In order to create a solution, that developer must understand the full accounting process, to a level almost equivalent to that of a qualified accountant. When asked to add extra functionality to a piece of existing software a phrase I hear all too often is “Isn’t it just a case of adding another column to the database?” with a complete disregard of how this new piece of data interacts, and integrates with the current system.

Reading allows a developer to explore other points of view, other ways of approaching problems and alternate methods of tackling a solution. Reading a wide variety of material is essential for advancing a developer’s understanding of logic and problem solving. If you are a developer and want to explore logic theory more closely consider researching the works of Kurt Gödel.

I could go on for ages here discussing the different areas a developer should be well versed in, but I shall save that for another post. Instead I will pick a few books (there are many many more) I feel that every developer should have read (at least twice!)

• The Recursive Universe: Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge - A fantastic exploration of Information Theory
• The Pragmatic Programmer - Full of great practical advice that you would never get taught on any computer science course.
• Who Moved My Cheese - Will encourage pro-active and innovative thought.
• Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering - A great discussion of Agile programming techniques.
• On Intelligence - Understanding how the human brain works will enable a developer to refine their working methodology.
• The Mythical Man Month and Other Essays on Software Engineering - Efficient management of software projects.

With the increasing prevalence of business critical information technology systems, combined with the transition to a 24×7 economy, the continuity of service and importance of protecting an organization’s data and IT infrastructure in the event of a disruptive situation has become an increasingly more visible business priority in recent years.

assessing DR priorities

To fully understand the level to which we should be protecting our IT against disasters, we need to cover a few concepts related to the business processes which rely upon them. These business processes may facilitate many different facets of our businesses. The website which facilitates our organisation’s sales or marketing presence, the email system which enables communication between our teams, the SQL server which contains our business intelligence - the list goes on. Each of these different IT systems ties in to the business process and hence we can attach a value to each. This value determines the acceptability of loss of the service and from this, it is possible to calculate a cost per unit of time that this service or business process is unavailable. Equally, value must be used to calculate the amount of acceptable irrecoverable data loss from a system. The difficult thing can be calculating these and it is often the case that these issues are addressed in reverse; companies wanting a Disaster Recovery solution without truly knowing the impact (cost) of the loss of their services/systems/business processes. When this occurs, it is important to bear in mind that whilst the best Disaster Recovery solution will have minimum data loss and also have you back up and running in very little time (if you are offline at all) - the costs associated can be astronomical.

To help us understand this better, two key concepts are introduced which underpin the cost model for Disaster Recovery.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

• The amount of data loss, expressed by an amount of time, which is acceptable in the even