In terms of capital expenditure, the main thing the solution has done is to allow us to really utilize our hardware to the maximum. Money is always an issue for a company of our size, and we don't always have the capital to replace servers on a regular basis. This gives us the ability, technically, to run servers until they just stop running, if we really want to. We're in that scenario now where we've got a system that still runs, but we have to replace the hardware because the operating system is no longer supported. onQ has allowed us to get every bit of life out of a server, which does lower our bottom-line.

It has saved us $40,000 or so, the cost of two or three servers. It has allowed us to run two or three servers a lot longer than we normally would have. Sometimes, we're getting another year or two out of them.

I wouldn't look at it as a return on investment, any more than you would look at the return on investment for an insurance policy. It's there if you need it and you hope you don't have to use it. In the meantime, we use it for some basic file recovery and some other things, plus it helps us meet some of our HIPAA compliance issues in terms of being able to recover, and as part of our disaster plan. There's value there, but I'm not a bean-counter so it's hard to put a dollar amount to it without doing a lot of analyzing.

Backups are kind of like insurance. It's tough for me to say whether I've seen any kind of return. Every time I've had to restore something, whether it's missing files or an Exchange mailbox, it has performed exactly how I hoped it would. When I lost the entire fire server, it performed exactly as I expected it to. In that sense, as far as the appliance is concerned, its sole purpose is to be your backup appliance and hold onto a retention. It has done exactly as I expected it to.

Like insurance, it's one of those things that you're bent out of shape that you're paying for it. Then all of sudden when you need it, it's the greatest thing on the planet.

I wouldn't say the solution lowered my capital expenditure by requiring less hardware. My solution prior to this was a tape drive. A tape drive typically attaches to a server. At the time it was attached to another server that I was already utilizing for Active Directory. So my expenditure for the tape solution was an auto changer and a whole pile of tapes. It wasn't a too terribly costly backup solution.

What I gained and by going to another appliance that was more full-featured, whether it be, say, a Quorum or a Unitrends or any other full boxes with the additional functionality, was peace of mind. I know I can bring these servers up quickly, and that they're being tested, and I'm getting backups multiple times a day. That offsets the change in cost because this is a full-featured box. You're buying a whole other server that has the software built into it. Overall, it is more expensive than a single tape drive, but it's no more expensive than any other appliance, like a Unitrends.

Being a backup system, Quorum OnQ is an essential tool. The return on investment would be visible only when my company faces a disaster, for instance. The tool is generally part of our company's everyday operations.

Having Quorum gives us 100 percent uptime. That would be the easiest way I can quantify it. If a server fails, we're still in business. Everything still runs as it should.

It's not possible to put an actual number or value on how much it's saved us. But to give you an idea, without that server — the one I told you about that went down — our lending department would not have been able to function and the branch would not have been able to function, so no transactions would have happened.

What I know is that it saves me headaches.

It depends on the scenario. Sometimes it might not be as impactful. It could be a hard drive failure in a RAID, which is not a big deal. One hard drive fails, you pop it out, pop a new one in, it's rebuilt. Operating system failures can be fixed, but it takes some time. If it's a catastrophic failure, that's where it really comes in handy because we have a copy of the server. We just boot it up, let it run, copy it over to a new server. Done.

With regard to ROI, it is invaluable.

The OnQ appliance system offers tremendous time savings for your IT department. Your ROI should consider the time savings for IT team members.

The solution is definitely an extra cost, but it's an extra cost that's worth it because of what it offers. It's not a necessary expense, as I could do similar things with a hard drive that was getting backed up to every night, but having Quorum, I can now recover every few hours instead of every few day and I can get immediate recovery on servers that have critical failures. It has proven its worth and its cost, but it is an extra cost that isn't strictly required.

The ease of recovering from data loss is huge, as well as the peace of mind, knowing that if something does happen, I can have a replacement running in a matter of minutes.

We haven't really fully measured ROI.  I definitely believe there has been ROI.

On multiple occasions, I have had to run a server in recovery mode because the physical server failed (motherboard failure, etc.). Our business was able to run normally during those times and when new hardware was in I was able to do a BMR without interrupting business.  That is fifty coworkers who were not idled because of failed hardware. That is pretty huge.

We also had a ransomware incident a few years back and OnQ saved the day. We were able to recover every file in just a few minutes. This cost savings on the loss of productivity for this incident alone paid for the solution multiple times over.