Due to popular demand, we’re adding additional online training sessions to introduce StorageCraft ShadowProtect Granular Recovery for Exchange. Many of our reseller and solution provider partners were not able to attend our previous Webinars, so we’ve added three — one this week and two next week.  Here’s the schedule for the training sessions:

Thursday, March 11th: 2:00 – 3:00 PM EST

Tuesday, March 16th: 2:00 – 3:00 PM EDT

Thursday, March 18th: 2:00 – 3:00 PM EDT

(The daylight time versus standard time designation should remind you that Daylight Saving Time begins Sunday. And it’s the dreaded “spring forward” when we lose an hour of sleep. Sorry.)

The training sessions will explain how ShadowProtect Granular Recovery for Exchange will help you recover lost mailboxes, e-mail messages and e-mail attachments, quickly and easily. It will also help you search for specific information in your Exchange environment (like e-mail messages containing certain words), migrate to a new Exchange server simply and easily or run reports on your Exchange environment. We’ve heard from some of our partners that software that does all that sounds “too good to be true” — but it really works. It will save you a lot of time and help you avoid many headaches.

To find out more or to sign up for a Webinar, you’ll just need to follow the link to the ShadowProtect Granular Recovery for Exchange online training.

Every year the storage analysts try to predict what the big trends will be for the coming year. They base their analysis on polling data and other research. Many of them are specific and others are more general. Enterprise Strategy Group’s 2010 list has some trends that are right up our alley. Here is one highlight:

#1. The shift from tape to disk: the modernization of backup continues.

From our perspective, that’s something everyone should have done years ago. But there are a lot of businesses that are still using tape for all of their backup. If you’ve already made the switch, you know that tape has problems from start to finish. Not only is it slow in recording the backup, it’s slow in restoring from the backup — that is, if you’re even able to use the backup. Disk is cheaper, faster and very reliable. Plus you can verify your disk-based backup quickly and easily with many MD5 verification tools. In the event of a disaster, recovering from a disk-based backup will not cause you hours and hours of frustration.

If you decide to keep your tape backups, we have a betamax, some 8-track tapes and a phone answering machine we’d like to sell you, too.

Other trends highlighted in the ESG report include the changing role of virtualization, cloud-based backup and the changing attitude toward backing up enterprise desktops and laptops. Check out the entire ESG list for yourself and see if you’ll be facing any of these issues for the year.

The headlines are always scary: “Conficker Worm Strikes Police Department,” “Botnet Attack Launched on Government Web Sites” and “Computer Virus Brings Down Hospital.” The way viruses, malware, spyware and denial of service attacks are striking businesses on a regular basis show that they’ve almost become a way of life for us.  These problems constantly put us on the defense, so it’s a good idea to make sure you’re doing all you can:

1. Implement solid anti-virus software across your business. Make sure virus definition files are updated frequently for all your users.
2. Put up firewalls and make sure they’re adequate for the latest kinds of attacks.
3. Educate your users. Tell them that the Web sites they visit — even reputable ones — might be infected. So they shouldn’t download software unless they’re sure it’s safe.
4. Make sure you’re backups are up to date.

That last one may seem strange, but it’s something you can do that proactively addresses the next possible attack. After all, there is no “current” defense for the next virus, adware or malware.

Consider that your backup can be another kind of “anti-virus” tool. With a point-in-time solution like ShadowProtect, you can recover your server (or a desktop or laptop) to a known, good state before the attack took place. Plus, your backup should allow you to restore quickly, otherwise it’s just as much a problem as the virus that took you down. Waiting around while you restore terabytes of data, isn’t an option. You need a solution that can get you up and running in a matter of minutes, not hours.

The next time you’re updating  your anti-virus software or fine-tuning your firewall, consider that you might want to make sure you have a plan in place in case your first line of defense doesn’t hold.

It’s always nice when someone says something good about you. In this case, the honor is for StorageCraft vice president of sales, Mike Kunz. CRN and Everything Channel just named Mike to their 2010 Channel Chiefs list. We’ve known for a while that Mike is a fantastic advocate for our partners  — distributors, value added resellers and MSPs — but it’s nice to get confirmation from people on the outside.

You can read all about the award in this news release. Interested in finding out more about the StorageCraft Reseller Partner Program or our Managed Service Provider Partner Program? There is a lot of information on the StorageCraft Partner Program pages on our Web site.

StorageCraft ShadowProtect is mentioned in a success story in PC World about virtualizing blade servers. PC Troubleshooters in Rhode Island is using ShadowProtect Server as part of its backup and disaster recovery solution to protect the systems and data on the servers in their data center.

We created our own backup and disaster recovery system by deploying a network-attached storage device onsite and using StorageCraft ShadowProtect software to image servers on an hourly basis. Each image is encrypted and sent to two separate storage facilities in Maryland and Colorado.

Check out this case study and find out how you might be able to use StorageCraft ShadowProtect as part of your backup and disaster recovery offering, whether you’re protecting physical servers, virtual servers, or both.

StorageCraft is now offering competitive upgrade pricing for BakBone customers who decide to make the switch to ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software. The discount offer is for current users of BakBone NetVault Backup, Bare Metal Recovery and Real-Time Data Protector.

To get the competitive upgrade discount pricing — which is 35% off list price — customers have to show proof of license, like a copy of their license certificate, a copy of their receipt or an e-mail confirmation of a software download. Send an e-mail to discounts@storagecraft.com or send a fax to +1 801 545-4705 along with your proof of purchase. (You can mail in your product CD as a proof of purchase, too.) The offer is available in North America and South America only through March 15, 2010.

SearchStorage.com asked enterprise data storage managers what their priorities are for this year and here are the top three responses: data backup (48%), adding capacity (37%) and disaster recovery (DR) (36%).  A free subscription is required to view the whole story.

Playing catch-up with capacity tends to create a ripple effect through storage environments, affecting nearly everything from data protection to new technology implementations. But that’s not to suggest that storage managers will just be trying to catch their breath in 2010 — most still have fairly ambitious to-do lists involving some of the newest storage technologies available.

The survey also found that storage managers will be looking at new technology to solve some of their storage issues. In particular, they are planning to focus on cloud computing and data deduplication to manage the storage capacity they currently have.

StorageCraft is now offering competitive upgrade pricing for Acronis customers who decide to make the switch to ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software. The discount offer is for current users of Acronis True Image and Backup & Recovery.

To get the competitive upgrade discount pricing — which is 35% off list price — customers have to show proof of license, like a copy of their license certificate, a copy of their receipt or an e-mail confirmation of a software download. Send an e-mail to discounts@storagecraft.com or send a fax to +1 801 545-4705 along with your proof of purchase. (You can mail in your product CD as a proof of purchase, too.) The offer is available in North America and South America only through March 15, 2010.

We’ll be announcing one more competitive upgrade discount later this week.

The e-mail ad touted a “brand new solution” that solves the problem that’s overwhelmed IT teams for years — completing backup jobs in the short amount of time available, the “backup window.” The ad said the company had found a way to incorporate imaging technology to eliminate lengthy backup jobs.

The only problem is, this isn’t new, as ShadowProtect users can attest. Whether you’re backing up physical systems or virtual systems, ShadowProtect takes point-in-time snapshots of the server’s operating system and data. Then, while your server remains online, ShadowProtect creates a backup image of everything in your server environment.

The scheduler in ShadowProtect lets you specify how frequently you run your backup. For example, you can set it up to run a full backup every evening, and take incremental backup images throughout the day — even as frequently as every 15 minutes.

So while the problem of shorter backup windows may be an old one, the solution isn’t necessarily new. And even if you’re planning to migrate to virtual systems — something you can also accomplish with ShadowProtect — you don’t need to change your backup system just because you’re moving into the virtual world. You can do protect both physical and virtual systems with ShadowProtect.

StorageCraft is also offering competitive upgrade pricing forSymantec customers who decide to make the switch to ShadowProtect backup and disaster recovery software. The discount offer is for current users of Symantec Backup Exec, Live State Recovery and V2i Protector.

To get the competitive upgrade discount pricing — which is 35% off list price — customers have to show proof of license, like a copy of their license certificate, a copy of their receipt or an e-mail confirmation of a software download. Send an e-mail to discounts@storagecraft.com or send a fax to +1 801 545-4705 along with your proof of purchase. (You can mail in your product CD as a proof of purchase, too.) The offer is available in North America and South America only through March 15, 2010.

We’ll be announcing more competitive upgrade discounts for additional products next week.