Stage2Data 
Enterprises are moving rapidly to large cloud computing platforms to run their apps and very often, most of them tend to ignore the very crucial, disaster recovery and backup planning. “Many of them believe they don’t need that for large third party. The truth is, it is someone else’s server. Your local infrastructure still needs to be protected,” reprises Jeff Collier, President and Founder, Stage2Data. “Although there are some snapshots provided, it isn’t full backup.” Collier further adds, “We manage the entire failover and fall back process for the customer.” By ‘we’ Collier refers to Stage2Data, one of the fastest growing and trusted providers of cloud solutions that has been creating its own path to success since 1998 by leveraging its expertise in offering data-driven solutions. The firm specializes in disaster recovery (DR), backup and infrastructure to protect servers and data of customers at cost effective rates.
Since the beginning, Stage2Data has built strong partnerships with cloud backup and DR solutions providers like Rubrik, Zerto and Veeam. The company’s name, Stage2Data is reflective of its roots in the data solutions segment. “Data within any industry involves three important stages —data creation, management and destruction. Since its infancy, our firm focused on providing managed products and services exclusively for the second stage of data’s lifecycle,” beams Collier. “Hence the name, Stage2Data!”
Stage2Data views DR as one of the priorities for organizations with multi-regions operations, looking to move into cloud. “When it comes to DR, there are three types of service providers. Self-serve is the kind of DR service where the customer is responsible for entire recovery process and only has access to infrastructure,” Collier says. “Managed services help recover applications and customers should manage the network and phone systems.” The last category of service providers are those that fit in between the self serve and managed service providers like Stage2Data. “We manage the entire failover and fall back, including the network and phone,” beams Collier.
Stage2Data’s disaster recovery-as-a-service or DRaaS as a hosted service to safe guard key servers and data incorporates three important levels of DR plan for handling application or minor data issues, damages to primary infrastructure and ‘the Crater’ (access denial, damage due to fire, water, natural disasters and other infrastructural damage). Stage2Data’s DR services involve a four-hour action of fully recovering network cutovers and phone systems that helps reduce the overall impact of the customers’ business operations.
Be it offering DRaaS or BaaS, Stage2Data has the right set of solutions for businesses that have set a firm plan to move their primary infrastructure on cloud. The solutions have an immediate impact and guarantee complete protection to those assets. “In other words, it is Cloud agnostic. Our customers have the leave the worry about running multiple BaaS on DRaaS solution,” says Stephen Pyott, VP, Sales, Stage2Data.
Stage2Data is committed to deliver onsite, hybrid cloud backup, archive and analytics solutions to clients with any sized environment ranging from Gigabytes to multiple Terabytes. A recent addition that encompasses all the above services, a true industry focussed Disaster recovery in a box is called CUBE. CUBE is fast, secure and cost-effective and dedicated to small and medium business focused appliances with enterprise features. It boasts of data usage capacity from few to multiple Terabytes.
The CUBE, powered by Rubrik, is an easy to deploy, turn key solution that involves no upfront fees and helps users save on capital expenditures.
Recently, Stage2Data helped one of its clients to move all legacy models onto new Rubrik and Zerto solution and also did the replication to S2D using the same technology and long-term archiving with AWS. This way, Stage2Data manages to provide its customers full-suite of real, hybrid cloud solution. “We always advise businesses to not forget that the cloud is just someone else’s server,” says Pyott as an important takeaway for businesses. “When thinking about moving to the cloud, look past the marketing hype and sales talk. Make sure the best practices of DR and Backup can still be applied. Don’t get caught up in the hype and then suddenly find out it is super expensive.”
