Cloud Backup And DR Services Rely On Dedupe

Holding Data Forever

BlackBridge Networks is a world leader in geospatial imagery, with its own polar orbiting satellites that have captured more than 5 billion square kilometers of imagery. BlackBridge also manages a significant portion of the data the satellites gather for customers, securing it, retaining it, and providing access.

“We are required by some of our customers to retain the data literally forever,” explains Danial Thomas, Senior Director of Sales at BlackBridge Networks. “The Canadian government, for example, requires that we hold all Canadian geospatial data that we capture in perpetuity.... That sets a very high standard for data protection.”

It also meant that BlackBridge became a leader in secure data management practices and infrastructure. “We realized that if we could meet our own requirements, then the infrastructure and the services we had in place would be very interesting to other companies in our industry, and also to other industries with significant amounts of data to manage…” explains Scott Soenen, CTO at Blackbridge.

Expanded Backup and DR Services

BlackBridge decided to build on its success by offering general backup and DR services with its own cloud-based protection service, BlackBridge Stratus. However, to make handling backup and remote DR as effective and economical as possible, BlackBridge realized it needed additional technology, so the company looked for a partner with expertise in deduplication and replication.

“We thought of Quantum immediately,” said Thomas. “We knew them because of their 30-year history in the storage industry, and knew the quality of their products and services…Deduplication was a critical technology for what we wanted to do, and we knew Quantum was a pioneer in that technology and had an extremely powerful set of deduplication solutions.”

Deduplication Redefines Cloud Data Protection

“Moving backup data over networks takes up too much bandwidth and makes remote data protection too expensive,” explains Soenen, “but Quantum’s deduplication technology solved that problem. By marrying our data center facilities with Quantum's DXi platform, we were able to … allow customers to back up their core data and their critical data to an offsite secure location.”

With Stratus, organizations back up data locally to a Quantum DXi disk backup system, either physical or virtual. The DXi deduplicates the data, reducing its volume by up to a factor of twenty or more, and holds it for short-term recovery. For DR, the reduced data is replicated to BlackBridge’s data centers, where it is retained remotely. Because the data is deduplicated, bandwidth requirements—and storage costs—are dramatically reduced.

Subscription-Based Data Protection

“Stratus offers companies of all sizes a subscription-based, cloud-enabled model that allows them to scale their data protection needs economically as their data grows,” says Thomas. “It makes secure remote backup and DR practical for companies that in the past could not afford the required up-front hardware costs and the ongoing management overhead.”

“One of the biggest advantages… has been the recognition of Quantum as an industry leader. Whenever I talk to potential customers… everyone understands the solid technology behind Quantum."