Remember the old Bible story about Noah’s Ark? I’ve often wondered what really happened after the flood. That is, we all remember he was prepared, but do we know what he specifically did afterward?

This Bible tale reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a customer, who was telling me about his “great” backup and recovery plan. As I listened, I thought to myself, “okay…he religiously performs his back-up and recovery duties and has a disaster recovery plan in place, but what will this guy do the day after disaster strikes if his backup and recovery files are also lost?” Put differently, how jacked up is this guy’s back up plan?

As I reflected on this, I came up with a couple of tips that he (or anyone else in his shoes) should do:

Tip #1:  Plan, Plan, and…plan! Weathering a successful disaster always starts with planning. This planning usually needs to take place months or years before an actual disaster. Moreover, thorough plans increase the likelihood of a quick and complete recovery. Planning for an IT disaster should include the following components: a) Data Backup strategy, b) Backup Infrastructure, and c) a Recovery Procedure.

Data Backup strategy. Your data backup strategy should define what needs to be backed up and how frequently to perform the backups, and how long to retain the data. This is a critical part of your disaster recovery (DR) plan.

Backup Infrastructure. Since merely having a data backup strategy is meaningless unless you have the ability to restore your data to a “backup server”, your plan should delineate the server or infrastructure that will be used to restore your data. This backup server can be owned in-house, or, in many cases it can be leased on an ‘as-needed’ basis.

Recovery Procedure. Last, a recovery procedure is a documented guide which will be used in the event of a disaster. The recovery procedure should include details such as, where all media are located, how to access the backup infrastructure, how to perform the data recovery, and emergency contact information for critical persons.

Tip #2:  TEST! Once the DR planning has been implemented, the next step is to test the plan with a DR Test.

Without testing your DR plan, you will have little chance of a successful recovery after a live disaster. It is advised that all elements of your DR Plan be tested annually (at a minimum,) and that all tests, and their results be thoroughly documented, with special emphasis on any issues encountered, and, lessons learned.

Takeaways. A true IT disaster is never convenient or pleasant, but your recovery can be fully successful if you employ the aforementioned tips. Failing to do so, however, will almost certainly result in a failure, which could lead to significant business impact.

Parting words. While a company’s backup, recovery and disaster preparedness plan is unique based on their own business needs, the  above tips will help you assess, document, and execute your plans so your business can be up and running as soon as possible after a disaster. Though the plan I’ve outlined here can be done-yourself, it may make sense for you to bring on professionals for some elements, such as offsite data recovery services and testing. Clear Technologies’ services team is always available to organizations of all sizes as a resource. With affordable, annual pricing, Clear Technologies is friendly to not only you, but also your budget.

Download PDF: After the flood. How jacked up is your backup – February 21 2013

Download PDF:Press Release-Gale Irland

FRIDAY, JUNE 29, 2012: COPPELL, TX USA: Clear Technologies announces the appointment of Gale Eric Irland as Director of Business Development. Gale joined the Marketing and Sales team on June 1, 2012.

In addition to growing and developing new client relationships,  Gale will be responsible for developing and executing plans to create, grow, and expand Clear Technologies’ portfolio of offerings including Visual Storage Intelligence® and managed services.  “Gale has a knack for adapting industry trends to specific client challenges and creating financial deal structures to meet these challenges. Simply put, Gale is a proven consultative sales leader affording him the ability align business goals with IT strategy.” said Phil Godwin, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Gales brings over 20 years of IT sales, marketing and management experience. His former positions include Client Executive, Senior Consulting Sales Specialist – Channel Sales, Technical Sales Manager, and Competitive Sales Leader, and Senior Sales Specialist at IBM. He received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.

For more information, please visit us at www.cleartechnologies.net or call us at 972-906-7500.

Download PDF:Press Release Phil Godwin – Story Leaders

FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 2012: COPPELL, TX USA: Phil Godwin’s business transformation story was recently highlighted in best-selling author, Mike Bosworth’s new book, “What Great Salespeople Do: The Science of Selling Through Emotional Connection and the Power of Story”. Published by McGraw-Hill and written with co-author, Ben Zoldan, the book emphasizes forging connections that can move people to change.

 “Frankly, I was surprised to learn that story telling not only transforms salesperson-client relationships, but also can motivate members of my team. As a result of the principles in Mike and Ben’s book, we now have new customers and a more engaged sales and marketing team.” said Godwin, Global Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Clear Technologies.

Godwin has over 15 years experience in the Value-Added Reseller (VAR) market. For the last six years, Godwin has been the Global VP of Marketing and Sales at Clear Technologies, an IBM Premier Business Partner. During his tenure, Godwin, along with Clear’s dedicated employees, Chief Technology Officer Van Symons, and Chief Financial Officer James Hargis, has achieved heightened sales success by transforming the value Clear Technologies brings to its prospects and clients.

For more information, please visit the Clear Technologies’ website, www.cleartechnologies.net or contact Phil at pgodwin@cleartechnologies.net.

To download the chapter that highlights Phil’s story, please visit McGraw-Hill’s website: https://www.mhprofessional.com/downloads/products/0071769714/0071769714_bosworth_ch_10.pdf

Showback was once considered the first step toward implementing chargeback — often hailed as one of the most valuable features of cloud storage. But organizations today are putting showback to great use on its own as a resource analysis tool, and are holding off using the more complex chargeback process.

In a showback vs. chargeback comparison, there’s just one major difference. Chargeback applies the costs of IT services, hardware or software to the business unit that uses them. It has been a goal of IT for years, and the cloud was considered a way to facilitate the use of chargeback. Showback, a term that has been in use for only a couple of years, provides IT, business units and management the same analysis that would be used for chargeback — but doesn’t bill anyone for the services.

To implement chargeback, IT departments hand their company’s business units a formal bill to recover IT costs. That concept hasn’t caught on with most organizations because it’s difficult getting finance departments, IT centers and business units to agree on base metrics.

So showback is becoming the more common way to track usage of IT resources and map them to specific applications, business units and end users without involving the finance or accounting departments. Companies are using showback to instill a culture of cost awareness, to justify requests for new purchases and even make decisions on whether a company has the IT infrastructure to support an acquisition.

“How many use the metrics for measuring? Quite a few do,” said Greg Shulz, founder of Stillwater, Minn.-based storage consulting firm StorageIO Group. “How many [are] actually doing billing? Not the majority. Many use a tool to derive metrics and measurements, but not to actually generate an invoice and chargeback.”

“If you can’t agree on the metrics, the tool is never going to work,” said Phil Godwin, vice president of sales and marketing at Clear Technologies Inc., an IT service provider and consultant company. “Infrastructure is funded project by project. If you do chargeback, how do you ensure a business unit is getting the fair share of the expense?”

Another problem with chargeback is that it’s hard to keep up with ever-changing costs and IT budgets as new servers, applications and other technologies are implemented.

“That budget is always changing,” said Marc Staimer, president of Beaverton, Ore.-based Dragon Slayer Consulting. “It’s always in a state of flux. That’s why the majority don’t even bother.”

A data center engineer at a health care company said he implemented showback instead of chargeback because chargeback has to be integrated with the finance or accounting system. The organization is using Visual Storage Intelligence (VSI), a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product developed by Clear Technologies. The company started using the tool in late 2011 with a goal of using the data to make strategic decisions and to make business units more cost-conscious of IT resources.

“Let’s say somebody asks for another module for an application,” said the engineer, who asked not to be identified because he didn’t have clearance from his company to talk to the media. “We’re able to give them a view into the cost of that added component. At some point, the business unit has to make a choice if that extra feature or function is worth it. Showback raises a level of awareness that these things come at a cost.”

Implementing showback through a chargeback product

Showback capabilities are most commonly implemented through products designed for chargeback, such as NetApp’s OnCommand Insight software, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager, Symantec’s Veritas Operations Manager, VKernal Chargeback and VMware vCenter Chargeback Manager. Storage resource management (SRM), storage resource analysis (SRA) and data protection management (DPM) tools often provide base metrics from software applications through hard drive spindles that can be used for both chargeback and showback.

EMC recently announced ProSphere 1.5, an SRM application that delivers showback capabilities via reports for capacity reporting and analysis. A report can show capacity allocated to the host and application, as well as service-level agreement (SLA) requirements. The product also has a built-in search engine for objects built on a REST interface to work with server integration for the cloud.

Kevin Gray, product marketing manager for EMC’s SRM product group, said most of his company’s customers are more interested in showback vs. chargeback. “We’re not seeing many doing hard chargeback,” he said. “They’re not interested in giving somebody a bill.”

NetApp OnCommand Insight provides end-to-end path visibility into heterogeneous environments and tracks storage utilization and consumption by tenant, business unit, line of business, tier and application. This showback process can help companies save money by seeing how much storage an application consumes and then placing that application on the proper storage tier.

“This information can be used by managers and executives in the business entity to make business decisions on how to optimize their resource usage,” said Kristina Brand, product marketing manager for NetApp OnCommand. “For example, they can quickly see the amount of storage an application takes up for the actual usage, [which] may justify moving that application to a lower tier [to] save money.”

Brand said service providers are using OnCommand to provide itemized or granular reporting and billing to their customers, which is considered a form of chargeback. However, she said cloud providers are more commonly using OnCommand to deliver a granular view of how applications are consuming resources.

“Our customers are still primarily concerned about showback as a strategy for instilling cost accountability,” Brand said.

Charge backs. When engaged in one of these discussions last week, it hit me. The IT manager said something like “These guys keep asking for more and have no idea what it costs…” I responded with my standard, “You must not use charge backs” knowing full well his shop, like many other IT shops, do not use charge backs. Using “charge backs” is (of course) the answer to this dilemma. But, this phrase, is an all too often overused, but a seldom accomplished talking point. Most IT shops like throw around the phrase, but few actually have a charge back system in place! But why?…

Read the Entire Document- Download PDF: Show Backs equal Green Backs

As I shrugged off his grievance, he showed me an article that verified his unusual contention. The TechTarget article stated Thai floods will impede storage manufacturers’ ability to produce hard drives…this interruption in supply will inevitably cause storage prices to double or triple. He went on to say that in a better economic climate this rise would just be minor hiccup in his procurement process. But now, perpetual price increases have become a chronic headache!

Read the Entire Document- Download PDF: Pareto Productivity and Pricing

Download PDF:Kendall Press Release

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2011: COPPELL, TX USA: Clear Technologies announces the appointment of Otha “Kendall” Kinnear as Senior Solutions Architect. Kendall joined the Sales and Service team on December 1, 2011.

In his new position, Kendall will be responsible for POWER® server presales and technical support. Accordingly, Kendall will design solutions to meet the requirements of clients, assist the technical team in the areas of server performance, Backup Recovery and Media Services (BRMS), configuration, and administration. “Kendall is a superstar. He is competent, proficient, and a very nice person to be around. Not only is Kendall a nice guy, he is great at getting to the heart of an issue and working out a solution. Kendall’s level of skill and expertise raises the level of our customer conversations from surface-level problem identification to deep-level problem resolution.” said Phil Godwin, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Kendall brings over 38 years of experience in providing clients with solutions to their IT needs, resolving operational and backup issues, and providing disaster recovery solutions. His former positions include Senior Solutions Architect, Techline Specialist, Systems Engineer, and a Systems Planner. He is an IBM Certified Technical Sales Specialist (Power System with POWER7 and IBM i), IBM Certified Sales Specialist (Power Systems with POWER7 and IBM i), IBM Certified Specialist (Midrange Storage Technical Support), IBM Certified Technical Sales Specialist (Power System with POWER7 and AIX), and IBM Certified Technical Sales Specialist (Power System with POWER7 and AIX).

 For more information, please visit us at www.cleartechnologies.net or call us at 972-906-7500.

Download PDF:Press Release Julie Skora

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2011: COPPELL, TX USA: Clear Technologies announces the appointment of Julie Lynn Skora as Public Sector Account Manager. Skora joined the Sales team April 4, 2011.

In her new position, Skora will be responsible for public sector accounts in which she will ensure customer satisfaction and increase Clear’s presence in the public sector market by developing new accounts.  “Adding Julie to our team shows our commitment to serving our current and future public sector clients. Her proven ability in developing and maintaining strong relationships within the public sector as well as her impressive knowledge of IBM brands makes her one of our most valuable assets.” said Phil Godwin, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Skora brings over 12 years of cost savings, efficiency, server/storage consolidation, infrastructure services, and virtualization experience to her new position including former positions as:  Channels Account Manager at IBM, Account Executive at Agilysys, and Client Representative at IBM. She is certified in IBM P Series and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Dallas.

For more information, please visit us at www.cleartechnologies.net or call us at 972-906-7500.

Download PDF:Press Release John Culp

FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2011: COPPELL, TX USA: Clear Technologies announces the appointment of John Culp as Account Executive / Storage Specialist. Culp joined the Sales Technical team May 16, 2011.

In his new position, Culp will be responsible for new account sales with a focus on storage and Clear’s SaaS storage analysis product, Visual Storage Intelligence™.  “We excited to have John on our team. John truly has the right mix of being both a ‘techie’ and ‘business executive’ – both of which enable him to acutely understand storage-related issues and deliver reliable and affordable storage solutions.” said Phil Godwin, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Culp brings over 13 years of complex storage and price performance experience to his new position including former positions as: North American Business Development for ONStor at LSI, Western Region Sales for ONStor at LSI Western Region, Sales Engineering Manager at ONStor, Pre-Sales Engineer ONStor, and Technical Business Consultant for Celerra at EMC. He is certified in the following areas:  IBM Storage, EMC Proven Professional, AIX Sys Admin, and Brocade. Additionally, Culp is an active member of several IT User Groups in the DFW area.

For more information, please visit us at www.cleartechnologies.net or call us at 972-906-7500.

Download PDF:Press Release Keith McCallister

Contact: Mynor Alvarado
Clear Technologies
Phone: (972) 906-7500
Email: marketing@cleartechnologies.net

FRIDAY, JULY 8, 2011: COPPELL, TX USA: Clear Technologies announces the appointment of Keith McCallister as Systems Architect. McCallister joined the Pre-sales Technical team March 2, 2011.

In his new position, McCallister will be responsible for Power Systems design and installation. “Our customers want, and frankly need a consultant that can transform their information technology infrastructures into dynamic systems that deliver competitive advantages. Keith’s rare ability to succinctly communicate coupled with his aptitude for simplifying complex systems squarely meets their need. We are excited to have him part of our team.” said Phil Godwin, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

McCallister brings over 29 years of systems design experience to his new position including former positions as: Consulting Field Technical Sales Specialist at IBM, Consulting Technical Presales Specialist at IBM, and Consulting I/T iSeries Business Intelligence (BI) Technical Sales Leader at IBM. McCallister’s qualifications consist of iSeries, AIX, and ITIL V3 certifications. He received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Grambling State University in Grambling, LA. McCallister is an active civic volunteer serving as past school board member at Metro Academy of Math and Science and is a current member of the Hurst Euless Bedford ISD(HEBISD) Leadership Academy. Additionally, he serves as the Youth Athletic Director at the Mount Olive Baptist Church.

For more information, please visit us at www.cleartechnologies.net or call us at 972-906-7500.