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Centennial anniversary of San Francisco quake prompts IT professionals to prepare for natural disasters

Protection of vital corporate data is key to ensuring business continuity.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 17, 2006 -- On the morning of April 18, 1906, the city of San Francisco and its residents were awaken by a massive earthquake; although the earth shook for only a minute, the city was destroyed. More than 250,000 of the city's 400,000 residents were left homeless, 700 were killed and damage estimates exceeded $350 million (in 1906 dollars).

Tomorrow marks the centennial anniversary of the event that in many ways defined San Francisco. Hundreds of businesses, large and small, were ruined; schools throughout the area closed and 25,000 buildings were destroyed. The central business district, which at the time covered eight square miles and approximately 200 buildings, including structures that housed the San Francisco Examiner, Western Union and Mutual Life, were completely devastated.

The business landscape of the San Francisco area has changed considerably since the 1906 earthquake. Large, multinational businesses that supply the world with information technology, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas; government research centers and major university research hubs are all based in Northern California. At the heart of each of these organizations are volumes of irreplaceable data that is updated each second of every day. This data must be secured, protected and brought back online instantaneously in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.

"In 1906 mission critical data was protected in bank vaults, desk drawers and filling cabinets," said Marty Ward, vice president of product marketing, Asempra Technologies. "While the storage media were different a hundred years ago, the core issues of data recovery remain the same today. The earthquake that devastated the San Francisco Bay Area caused a major disruption in business continuity because people and businesses were unable to salvage vital business records."

To assist companies with data protection strategies, Asempra Technologies, a leading provider of enterprise-level continuous data protection and real-time recovery management solutions has published a "Top Ten" list of recommendations to ensure that businesses and large organizations have implemented thorough procedures to ensure IT business continuity in the event of a natural or man-made disaster.

1. Identify all business critical data and systems within the company.

2. Perform a business impact analysis to revenue and cost implications of a disaster recovery plan.

3. Define retention periods for all data.

4. Establish data recovery service level agreements (recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives).

5. Develop a business continuity/disaster recovery IT plan for various types of system failures (natural disasters, human error, etc.).

6. Identify, educate and train the appropriate IT personnel on your organization's business continuity/disaster recovery plan.

7. Backup your data on a regular basis to a secondary source.

8. Replicate and/or store a copy of critical data at an offsite location.

9. Test your data protection and recovery procedures on a regular basis.

10. Review and update your business continuity plan annually.

"Disasters, man-made or natural, can hit at any time as we've seen in the past several years," said Brian Babineau, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "In today's global economy business transactions take place 24-hours each day and lost data can translate into a significant amount of lost revenue. Simply put, this is unacceptable. Customers expect companies to be up-and-running 24x7 and the ability to restore data instantaneously is becoming priority one among IT professionals."

About Asempra Technologies, Inc.

Asempra Technologies is a leading provider of real-time recovery management solutions, which deliver continuous data protection with guaranteed data integrity and instant recovery. The Asempra Business Continuity Server(TM) leverages existing IT infrastructures and reduces the management complexity and tools required for today's data protection needs. Asempra is headquartered at 640 West California Avenue, Suite 110, Sunnyvale, California 94086. For more information, please call 408.215.5800 or visit http://www.asempra.com.



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