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Laptop Desktop Backup Planning

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Most of us have heard of the stat re: over 50% of a company's data living outside the datacenter.  You've probably also seen the Pepperdine university study which estimates the average expected cost for each data loss incident to $3,957.  The study is a bit dated now, but it provides a pretty good framework to estimate the cost of data loss.  If anything, the costs would probably be higher now.  Also, with laptops being the majority of PCs in a company the probability of data loss increases dramatically.

At any rate, say, you've decided that you want to backup the data on your laptops or desktops or you are trying to figure out what it takes to backup your laptop and desktop population.  Perhaps you're trying to figure out how to internally sell the idea of backing up laptops and desktops.  May be you're using a solution already and aren't too pleased with it and are trying to understand how to change it.  Well, you've come to the right place.  In this series of posts, I'll try to try to layout a comprehensive approach towards solving the problem of unprotected data on laptops and desktops.  I'll also try to list the various requirements around desktop or laptop backup.  Just for context, I've written this post from the perspective of a mid- to large enterprise (100 employees and up, though most of the content applies to smaller companies also).

Approaching the problem:

1. Understand your requirements: everything starts with defining your requirements well. If you understand your requirements around backup of your laptop and desktop population you'll have made a great start. There are a lot of items involved here though - which need careful thought and planning. You need to understand the following:
• Backup requirements
• Recovery requirements
• Administrative requirements
• End user requirements
• Security requirements
• Environmental constraints
• Online backup vs. on-premise
• Budget requirements
• Service level requirements
• Are you looking for just backup or do you hope to get some operational leverage out of it?
2. Understand what a laptop backup solution will replace and can you show an ROI
3. Figure out what solutions are available
4. Create a test plan to figure out which solution best meets your needs
5. How to sell the solution internally to various stakeholders
6. How to make the final decision re: picking a solution

I plan to write a separate blog post for each of the topics above over the course of the next few weeks.  Does this seem like a good list?  Would you like to add/remove/change anything?