“Customer Awareness About Data Recovery Services And Solutions Offered By Stellar Information Technology Private Limited In Kochi Location”
ORGANIZATION STUDY & PROJECT REPORT
Submitted to
RAJAGIRI BUSINESS SCHOOL In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award
Of
POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN MANAGEMENT (2013-2015)
By
Jithin J Kumar P13185
RAJAGIRI BUSINESS SCHOOL RAJAGIRI VALLEY KAKKANAD, KOCHI 682039
DECLARATION
I, Jithin J Kumar, Student of Rajagiri Business School, hereby declare that this report titled ―CUSTOMER AWARENESS ABOUT DATA RECOVERY SERVICES AND SOLUTIONS OFFERED BY STELLAR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRIVATE LIMITED IN KOCHI LOCATION‖ under the guidance of Prof. Harish B, faculty, Rajagiri Business School is a bonafide record of the summer training done by me at Stellar Information Technology Private Limited, as a part of partial fulfilment of the award of the degree, Post graduate diploma management from Rajagiri Business School, Cochin.
I, also state that this report has not been submitted to any other university or educational institution for the award of any degree or diploma.
PLACE : Kochi JITHIN J KUMAR
DATE :
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The gratification and elation of completing this project will be incomplete without mentioning all the people who helped me. I am forever indebted to the Lord Almighty for being with me throughout and in all my endeavours I am greatly indebted to Dr. Joseph I. Injodey, the Principal, Rajagiri Business School for his encouragement, guidance and assistance in availing this opportunity for doing the project. I express my sincere thanks to Mr.Jiyo Paul, Branch Manager Kochi for taking enormous pain and spending his precious time in guiding and providing me with valuable suggestions for the completion of this project. I am grateful to my project guide Harish B, faculty, Rajagiri Business School for the support and encouragement he has given me. I am thankful to all the respondents who participated in my study and for sparing their time and effort without which I would never have been able to complete this study successfully.
Jithin J Kumar
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This project titled ―Customer awareness about data recovery services and solutions offered by Stellar Information Technology Private Limited in Kochi Location‖ was undertaken in Stellar Information Technology Private limited for 8 weeks for the partial fulfilment of the course. My industry mentor Mr Jiyo Paul (Branch Manager- Kochi) instructed me to cover Kochi Location to explore awareness about Stellar Information technology Private limited.
This project provides insights about customer awareness about brand name of Stellar Data Recovery. The customer awareness about data recovery and other services being offered by Stellar were explored in detail The project was conducted in kochi location and 112 companies participated in the survey.
As per my research I found out that Stellar is the only company that provides both data recovery services as well as software. There is a huge potential for the company because of the quality of service being offered. The competition from local players are stiff but could be overcome easily as there isn‘t any branded international players from data recovery industry in Kochi area.
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LIST OF TABLES
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION-I 8 PROFILE STUDY OF ORGANIZATION 8 INDUSTRY ANALYSIS 9
INTRODUCTION 9 PRELIMINARY UNDERSTANDING OF THE INDUSTRY 10 NATURE OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY 10 HISTORY 11
ORIGIN 11 EXPANSION 11 CORPORATE AND REGIONAL OFFICES 13 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE 15 QUALITY POLICY 18 ABOUT STELLAR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRIVATE LIMITED 19
SERVICE MODEL 20 DATA RECOVERY PROCESS 20 CAPABILITIES 22 INFRASTRUCTURE 22 LIFE AND WORK CULTURE @ STELLAR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRIVATE LIMITED 23 DATA RECOVERY SERVICES FROM FLOODED COMPUTER SYSTEMS BY STELLAR - 25 RECOVERY CAPABILITIE S 25 CLIENTS OF STELLAR DATA RECOVERY 27 AWARDS, REVIEWS AND RECOGNITION FOR STELLAR 28 LEARNINGS FROM INTERNSHIP 29
HARD DISK 29 TYPES OF HARD DISK CRASH 32 CAUSES OF DATA LOSS 33 WHAT IS DATA RECOVERY? 37 SOFTWARE SERVICES OF STELLAR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRIVATE LIMITED 39
STELLAR SMART:- 39 STELLAR PHOENIX CD ROM - DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARE 41 STELLAR INSTABACK: 42 STELLAR DATA CARE SUITE - A COMPLETE DATA SAFETY PACK 43 STELLAR WIPE - SAFE FILE ERASER 44 SWOT ANALYSIS 46
STRENGTH 46 WEAKNESS 47 OPPORTUNITIES 47 Rajagiri Business School Page 6
THREATS 48 COMPETITOR ANALYSIS 49
UNISTAL SYSTEMS PRIVATE LIMITED 49 DISK DOCTORS LAB INCORPORATED 49 CBL DATA RECOVERY TECHNOLOGIES 50 CONCLUSION 51 PROSPECTS OF DATA RECOVERY INDUSTRIES IN INDIA: 52
RISE OF TECHNOLOGY: 52 OUTLOOK 53 POTENTIAL SEGMENTS: 53 CONCLUSION: 53
SECTION-II 54 PROBLEM CENTERED STUDY OF THE ORGANIZATION 54 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 55
INTRODUCTION 55 RESEARCH AND IMPORTANCE OF MY WORK: - 55 MY FIELD WORK:- 56 DATA COLLECTION & SAMPLING 56 TITLE 57 OBJECTIVES 57 SAMPLE COLLECTION 58 RESEARCH ANALYSIS 59
1) IMPORTANCE OF DATA 59 2) PREFERRED DATA STORAGE DEVICES 62 3) FAULTY DATA STORAGE DEVICES 64 4) CONSULTANT IN CASES OF DATA LOSS 66 5) AWARENESS ABOUT STELLAR DATA RECOVERY 68 6) FACTORS CONSIDERED IN CASES OF CHOOSING DATA RECOVERY VENDOR 71 7) DATA RECOVERY SERVICE PROVIDER CURRENT RATINGS 73 8) WILLINGNESS TO SWITCH TO NEW DATA RECOVERY PROVIDER 74 9) FACILITIES PROVIDED TO CUSTOMERS 77 10) DISK SANITIZATION SERVICE 78 FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS 80
FINDINGS:- 80 SUGGESTIONS:- 81 BIBLIOGRAPHY 82 ANNEXURE 83
COVER LETTER 83 QUESTIONNAIRE 83
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SECTION-I PROFILE STUDY OF ORGANIZATION
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INDUSTRY ANALYSIS
INTRODUCTION
Stellar Information Private Limited is into the business of Data Recovery. Data Recovery means recovering the data that are stored in damaged data storage devices or recovering data from files that gets corrupted due to natural disasters, virus attacks, user errors or software errors, So that the data can be retrieved and used again. Data Recovery is a professional service that is being provided by a very limited number of companies and Stellar Data Recovery is the leader among them. Data can be stored in various methods; It can be stored in printed paper which is grouped into files or folders as in old government offices. Or it can be stored in digital format by means of excel, word, or PDF documents.
Advantage of storing data in digital format is that it requires very less shelf space, very low cost when compared to paper and printing cost, it can be retrieved easily, It can be easily send from one place to another. The only requirement is a digital data storage device and a computer so as to work with the digital document. Nowadays companies that are stores data in conventional printed documents and files have very much gone extinct as price of Data storage device have drastically come down in past decade. The amount of data being stored in the Data storage devices has gone up exponentially and so is the value of the data being stored.
Data storage Devices are of various types they are: Hard disk (Internal/External), CD/DVD, Pen Drives, Magnetic Tapes, Cloud servers. With Hard disk, CD/DVD, Pen Drives being the most common type of digital data storage devices in use. These digital data storage devices are delicate in nature and require very much care while working. People who work with these devices are often ignorant about it and hence chances for these devices to get damaged are very high. Once a Data storage device gets damaged retrieving the data which is stored in it is a tiresome job and it requires specialized people along with desired tools and controlled external environment depending on the type of damage that the device has.
Here is where Stellar Data Recovery or Stellar Information Technology Private Limited is of great importance. Stellar Data Recovery has specialized workforce with a wide range of desired tools, both software and hardware along with a world class laboratory to provide the controlled environment.
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PRELIMINARY UNDERSTANDING OF THE INDUSTRY
Data recovery solution provider is relatively a new business domain it comes under Information Technology industry. The exponential growth of IT and IT enabled services has led to the growth of Data recovery Services Industry. The industry mainly comprises of vendors who provide data recovery services and software providers who develops software which could recover corrupted files. Stellar Information technology private limited provides both softwares as well as services to its clients. In Indian market there aren‘t any such companies that provide both softwares as well as services to its customers hence it could be categorized as a monopoly. But there does exist a large number of small scale vendors who provide data recovery services but they could never be categorized as a competitor to Stellar Data Recovery because of their scale of operation is very less mostly confined to its locality.
NATURE OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY
The exponential growth of IT and IT enabled services had led to data explosion. Huge amount of data is being generated by the automated IT systems and most of them being essential for the day to day working of the company. The data thus generated needs to be stored for later use or as a record. Data storage devices need to be used for this. As the usage of data storage devices increases the probability of such devices to get damaged also increases. The data stored in such damaged devices are important and hence they need to be recovered. Hence nature of demand can only be expected to increase.
Stellar Data Recovery relies extensively on its Research and Development department. The innovations happening in the data storage device manufacturing industries need to be tracked. Research needs to be done on recovery of data from even those devices as probability of failure of a new unproven device is high. Stellar data recovery has around 160 engineers who specialize in recovery of data from almost all types of data storage devices. Stellar data recovery has 14 labs across India and a class 100 clean room at Gurgaon. The labs at 14 major cities are equipped with skilled workforce along with desired tools to ensure that data from logically crashed data storage devices are recovered. In case of physically damaged devices the device is packed and sent to Gurgaon for examining the device in controlled environment. A new class 100 clean room data recovery lab is being constructed in Chennai to cater to the expected increase in demand in the future.
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HISTORY
ORIGIN
Mr Sunil Chandna, Mr Manoj Dhingra, and Mr Kuljeet Singh are the founders of Stellar Information Technology Private Limited They graduated with degrees in Computer Science from University of Pune, Maharashtra, India in 1992. Their college project which dealt with recovery of deleted data from hard disk paved way for Stellar Information Technology Private Limited. On 3 August 1993, Stellar Information Systems Limited was registered in New Delhi. They first started working on developing software that recovered lost data from a floppy disk. The software was built for Windows Operating system platform. The software helped to recover data from FAT based windows partitions.
Data recovery was at very nascent stage and people in the Indian market were not aware of data recovery solutions. The Chernobyl virus attack that resulted in accidental erasing of data from hard disk provided a boon for the company. Many individuals as well as corporate turned towards Stellar to recover data from computers affected by the virus. The major market places for Stellar were South –Asia, Middle-East asia and countires like Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Stellar had then began to outsource its software development wing.
Company moved to a new base at Nehru place in New Delhi in 1995. Nehru place is one of the largest IT Computer hardware and Electronics markets in Asia. Under the leadership of Manoj Dhingra Stellar started data recovery services for logical-cum-physical cases of data loss from computers in 1995 By the year 2000, Stellar had started lab-service- data recovery operations in Bangalore and Mumbai.
EXPANSION
EXPANSION (DOMESTIC) In January 2004, Stellar shifted its base from New Delhi to Gurgaon. Gurgaon became the major office of the company; the first CLASS 100 Clean Room lab was established in Gurgaon to carry out all invasive data recovery operation on hard disks, removable storage media, and servers. Stellar thus became the only data recovery service provider in the entire South-East Asia to have the technology and infrastructure much
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required to recover data from physically damaged storage hard disk, memory cards, USB drives, CD/DVDs, RAID Servers. Within a few years Stellar expanded to 14 major cities in India.
GLOBAL EXPANSION After India, Stellar looked at expanding globally. It established Stellar Data Recovery Inc., its first offshore data recovery service branch in New Jersey, USA. Stellar acquired a European major RSE Data Recovery B.V. in the Netherlands which was a major breakthrough. Acquisition of RSE Data Recovery paved way for Stellar information technology to transact with the entire European market.. The new company now known as Stellar Data Recovery B.V. is catering data recovery services in the Netherlands, England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Hungary, Italy, and Luxembourg.
Stellar has developed and marketed more than 100 data recovery, email recovery, database and file recovery, password recovery, data sanitization, and system optimization tools for various platforms, such as Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Novell, along with providing with a strong service network,
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CORPORATE AND REGIONAL OFFICES
48 Bridge Street Metuchen, NJ +1-877-778- USA [email protected] 08840 6087
A-703, Premium House, Opp. Gandhigram Railway Station, Ahmedabad (079) 3241 6069 [email protected] Off. Ashram Road, Ahmedabad-380006
1206, 12th Floor, B Wing,
Bangalore Mittal Towers, Mg Road, (080) 2532 7865, [email protected] Bangalore – 560001
Chandigarh Sco 445-446, 2nd Floor, Cabin No.6 Sector 35c, Chandigarh- (0172) 465 5445 [email protected] 160022, Ut (India)
No.476/H1, 7th Floor , Temple
Chennai Tower, 672, Anna Salai, (044) 2433 6727 [email protected] Nandanam, Chennai – 35.
First Floor Of Mathewsons Kochi Square, Edappally, Facing Nh (0484) – 4035980 [email protected] 47 (Ernakulam- Alwaye), High School Jn., Cochin – 24
Hyderabad 6-3-352/1, Osman Plaza, 4th Floor, Road No.1, Banjara (040) 4007 7613 [email protected] Hills, Hyderabad – 500 034.
New Delhi Nehru Place Office 205, Skipper Corner, 88, Nehru (011) 2641 8810 [email protected]
Place, New Delhi-19.
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Connaught Place Office
New Delhi 502, 5th Floor, Mercantile (011) 43764471–75 [email protected] (C.P) House-15, K.G. Marg, Cannaught Place, New Delhi
TF-17, 10th Floor, Wave Silver Tower Sector-18 Noida - Noida (0120) 422 9580 [email protected] 201301 Landmark: Beside Mosaic Hotel
Gurgaon D18, Sector-33, Infocity Phase (Corporate (0124) 432 6700 [email protected] II, Gurgaon-122001. Office)
306, 3rd Floor, Matrix Towers Plot No. 24, Block –DN, Salt Kolkata (033) 4003 1205 [email protected] Lake City, Sector V, Kolkata – 700 091 (West – Bengal)
B-101, City Point, J. B. Nagar,
Mumbai Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri (022) 2821 5947 [email protected] (East), Mumbai.
209 A, City Mall, Near Pune
Pune University,Ganeshkhind Road, (020) 6620 8203 [email protected] Shivaji Nagar,Pune-411007
Office No.305, Third floor, Thacker Tower, Plot No.86, Vashi (022) 3266 6069 [email protected] Sector-17, 400703 Vashi, Navi Mumbai,India
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ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
Mr Manoj Dhingra Mr Sunil Chandna Mr Kuljeet Singh Director Director, CEO Director (IDomestic Business) (International Business) (Software, R&D)
Stellar Information Technology Private Limited is helmed by the three founders of the company. Mr Sunil Chandana , the Director (International Business) looks after the International and Overseas business of Stellar Information Technology Private Limited. Mr Manoj Dhingra, Cofounder is the director who looks after the Domestic Business of Stellar . Kochi Office of Stellar Data Recovery comes under supervision of Mr Manoj Dhingra. Mr Kuljith Singh the third founder of the company is the Director in charge of Research and Development and looks after the Software section of Stellar Data Recovery.
Director Director Director R&D + International Domestic Software Business (CEO) Business
Software Research And Finance National HR Manager Projects Head Development Department Manager
Software class 100 clean Software Research Accounts Development Room Lab HR executives Zonal Manager Support Team Engineers Department Team Assisitants
Branch Manager
Business Sr Business Management Branch Technical /Lab in Front Desk Development Development Trainee coordinator charge Executives Executives
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ORGANISATIONAL HIERARCHY UNDER DIRECTOR SOFTWARE AND R&D
Director (R&D)+ Software
Software Projects Research and Finance Department Head Devlopment
Software Software Reserach Lab Accounts Development Support Engineers Assistants Department Team Team
Mr Kuljeet Singh is the director of research and development. He also looks additional departments like Software development and Finance Department. The Research and Development department comprises of Research Engineers and Class 100 clean room lab assistants. The accounts department comes under Finance Department. Finance Department directly reports to Mr Kuljeet Singh.
ORGANISATIONAL HIERARCHY UNDER DIRECTOR DOMESTIC BUSINESS
Director Domestic Business
National HR manager manager
HR Executives Zonal Manager
Branch Manager
Business Sr Business Management Branch Co- Technical / Lab Front Desk Development Development Trainee ordinator in charge executives executives
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Mr Manoj Dhingra manages the domestic Business of Stellar Information Technology Private limited. The two main verticals that Mr Manoj Dhingra handles are Human Resources and Administration. HR department looks after the welfare of employees of all the branches of stellar in india. HR department functions from corporate office in Gurgaon. The HR department comprises of HR manager and HR executives who take responsibility for each zonal branch.
DIRECTOR INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS Mr Sunil Chandna manages the international business of Stellar Data recovery. He looks after the offshore office at New Jersey, USA .After acquiring RSE Data recovery B V the international business of stellar increased exponentially this had been carefully looked after under the leadership of Mr Sunil Chandna.
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QUALITY POLICY
―Achieving total customer satisfaction by delivering data security and safety through quality products, services, solutions and training. Aiming for the continuous improvement in our services and products through structured employee training programs and involvement of our business partners.‖
Stellar data recovery has acquired ISO certification for the quality of services it offers. Certification is provided by BM TRADA certification which is a leading multi sector certification body accredited by UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Services). Stellar Data Recovery company is a customer centric organisation and ia an ISO 9001:2000 certified data recovery company.
ISO 9001:2008 FOR STELLAR DATA RECOVERY ISO 9001:2000 specifies for requirements for a quality management system . Stellar Data Recovery demonstrated its ability to consistently provide product that meets customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements and Stellar works towards enhancing customer satisfaction through the effective application of the system, including processes for continual improvement of the system and the assurance of conformity to customers and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements.
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ABOUT STELLAR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRIVATE LIMITED
Stellar Information Technology Private Ltd was incorporated in 1993 by a group of Technocrat Professionals. They are the pioneers and market
FIGURE 1 leaders in Data Safety & Recovery software and services Stellar provides accurate, confidential & cost effective data safety & integrity solutions to its customers. They are equipped with necessary infrastructure and trained manpower. Stellar is the number one company in data recovery service industry as well as in development of data recovery and data loss prevention software in the whole of South Asian region where it commands a majority of market share.
Stellar Information Technology Private Limited is an ISO 9001-2000 certified company specializing in data recovery and services and solutions. The company was established in 1993 by a group of technocrats. Stellar is headquartered in Gurgaon. The company today has 14 branch offices across the country. Stellar is the only data recovery company that has a Class-100 Clean Room facility to ensure effective recovery even in cases of media that is severely damaged. Stellar has established itself as a market leader with an experience of over a decade.
Stellar has 1,00,000 satisfied customers across 150+ countries including USA, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Australia, U.A.E, Japan. They have reinforced their faith in stellar offerings. Stellar has a widespread partner network around the globe, which ensures comprehensive pre-sales and post-sales support to its customers. Stellar Data Recovery Solutions consists of a wide range of software for almost any data loss situation ranging from accidental formats to virus attacks to software malfunctions. Its products support most major operating systems like Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, and Novell. Digital Media Recovery, and E-mail recovery are additional data recovery software that they provide. Apart from this the company also provides data protection, data backup, and data eraser software.
• The brand Stellar denotes Success, Perfection and Trust. It transcends international borders. • ONLY Company in Indian Sub-continent having CLASS-100 Clean Room. • Extensive Research & Development, Use of Proprietary Tools
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• Presence In Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Gurgoan, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida, Pune, Vashi, Kochi.
SERVICE MODEL
Stellar believes that data crash causes are different hence the service plans are also needed to be different. Stellar has devised various service plans so that it suits the need of the customers as per the crash scenario. Keeping up the tradition of achieving total customer satisfaction, Stellar has indigenously developed tools & Processes which are Read-Only and does not harm the data status on the crashed media irrespective of the outcome of the recovery process.
DATA RECOVERY PROCESS
Stellar respects customers‘ valuable time and has evolved a strict documented process as per ISO 9001:2000 norms to ensure confidentiality, consistency & transparency each and every time. Stellar uses Read-Only processes on your crashed media so that your media status is not changed irrespective of the recovery process outcome. Customers are required to fill - in a media assessment form and provide it along with the media at Stellar Data Recovery labs. Outstation customers need to follow the instructions on how to pack their media & send it to nearest Stellar Data Recovery Lab. Once the media is received, the crashed media is assigned a unique job reference id, which would be helpful for the customer in future correspondence. Evaluation of the Media at Stellar Data Recovery Labs: Once media for data recovery along with necessary details reach lab, specialists will analyse the nature and amount of corruption/damage, its probable cause, assessing and working out the fastest data recovery process. The Evaluation of media will be done free of cost by data recovery specialists. In Post Evaluation stellar submits the following details:
1. An estimate of the percentage of data recovery possible. 2. The time involved in the data recovery process. 3. The Cost estimate for data recovery job.
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The Evaluation report along with the quotation is sent across to the customer through- email/telephone/fax Recovery of data from the media : Based on the Evaluation report provided by the Data Recovery specialists, customer can give his consent whether stellar should proceed with the Data Recovery job or not. Once the customer agrees to the above, he/she needs to send across a work order. Data Recovery specialists would start the recovery process and ensure that the recovery of data is done as per customer satisfaction. Handing over the data to the customer: Once the Data recovery process is complete, the customer care executive/coordinator sends the Directory Listing in a text file on E-mail. Alternatively he/she may also verify their Data at the Stellar Lab and register written acceptance by E-mail/Fax. The Data is delivered on a Free DVD or on hard disk supplied by customer.
Service Options: Stellar understand that circumstances and need for a recovery is different each time. To suit customer needs Stellar has introduced a number of service options. The service plans are categorized into Off-site (In-Lab) and On-site (Customer‘s Premises) and offer a wide range of service deliverables
Stellar offers Standard & Priority Service plans for both Off-site (In – Lab) and On-site (Customer premises) data Recovery Services.
Standard Plan Evaluation Recovery Process
Logical Crashes 4 Business Hours 3-4 Business Days *
Physical Crashes 4 Business Hours 5-6 Business Days*
Priority Plan Evaluation Recovery Process
Logical Crashes With-in 4 Hours With – in 48 Hours
Physical Crashes With-in 4 Hours With – in 48 Hours
Stellar provides both On-Site & Off-Site data recovery solution
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CAPABILITIES
Stellar Information Technology Private Limited is the first company in India to introduce professional Data Recovery Services in the year 1993. Since then there is no looking back. They have equipped themselves with the best in-class capabilities and practices. Today Stellar is capable of recovering data from virtually any kind of data loss situation, from logical media crashes that are caused primarily due to accidental formatting of hard disk, Invalid drive & disk specification, Accidental deletion of data even from Recycle bin / Sabotage, Data lost due to a virus attack, Missing File/Directory Or Accidental re- partitioning to physical media crashes caused due to mal-function of Read/Write Head assemblies and PCB/Logic Board failures. Stellar is equipped with country's only state of the art CLASS 100 CLEAN ROOM, Stellar has indigenously developed technology of head transplant that ensures maximum recovery success rate irrespective of the cause of failure. Today Stellar is confident of giving its customers up-to 100% Recovery success rate. R&D wing of Stellar has been working towards innovation in recovery technologies has been successful in devising tools capable of recovering data from most of the reported service area / Firmware problems. Stellar, today is country's first data recovery company to have indigenously designed tools for Single/Multiple Platter transplantation required in case of spindle motor problems. Stellar has inherent capabilities on Logic board repairs of hard disks of different makes, models and sizes.
Head Transplant & Repair PCB / Logic Board Repair Platter Transplant
INFRASTRUCTURE
Since 1993 Stellar has been pioneer in developing its infrastructure in order to benefit its clients. To match world standards Stellar has installed & commissioned India‘s first CLASS 100 Clean Room Lab in Gurgaon, It's a controlled recommended environment for all Read/write Head assembly transplants. For efficient operations Stellar maintains a strong inventory of more than 5000 Desktops & 2500 laptop hard disks forming a wide range comprising of various makes, models & capacities. Stellar keeps on upgrading its inventory on a regular basis. Stellar also has necessary infrastructure for repair capabilities of PCB / Logic board of hard disks. At Stellar, all of their software and hardware tools are
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indigenously developed & supported by our strong R&D wing thus providing an edge over vendors engaged in un-organized data recovery by making use of various third-party softwares without proper support mechanism rendering the critical data, which is highly risky. All of the tools used in Stellar are backed-up by constant research and upgrades and are Read-Only; guarantying status-quo of data at the time media was brought-in into our Lab. Stellar understands that apart from the technical capabilities it is equally important to make the service window available in customer's location. At present Stellar has offered its services in 16 Strategic Locations (Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida, Pune and Vashi). Stellar also offer its services by allowing its customers to send media through courier.
The major capabilities of Stellar Data Recovery can be summarized as
Service location Class-100 Clean Room Proprietary Software Drive Inventory (Spares) Repair Equipment
LIFE AND WORK CULTURE @ STELLAR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRIVATE LIMITED
In Stellar Information Technology Private Limited, Human Resource policies facilitate each individual to perform towards own and Company's growth and success
WORK CULTURE: Stellar has always endeavoured to create a work-culture which is open, positive and rewarding; where there are exciting growth opportunities for every deserving Employee of Stellar Family. Everyone is encouraged to learn new skills on the job as well as through formal training programs. In Stellar Data Recovery success is not confined not only in monetary profits but also covering quality of products, excellence of operations, growth, customer goodwill and leadership in business. Such a success not only brings in a feeling of belongingness but also gives self-satisfaction.
EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION: Stellar has invested heavily in progressive HR practices. Stellar makes it a point to organise get together and Motivational events such as Outbound Trip. These are an integral part of work culture in Stellar Data Recovery. Also Stellar does provide Infrastructure Support for conducive work environment.
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HEALTH: Employees and their dependants are covered under company paid health and accident insurance schemes. These schemes also provide tie-ups with more than 200 hospitals across the country, thus ensuring quicker accessibility, discounts and easy-pay option plans with guaranteed admission.
TRAININGS: Several Training Programmes are being conducted in Stellar to ensure better work performance and overall Personality Development. Structured workshops are conducted once in a while,
Time Management Communicating Effectively Team Management Customer Orientation Project Management Emotional Quotient
AUTONOMY & EMPOWERMENT: Stellar encourage people to work with autonomy, to challenge old ideas, to develop themselves & their Job, to question old ways, thus move beyond their job description. Stellar provides its employees with an atmosphere where they can develop themselves & others to move towards jobs that requires greater involvement. At the same time each individual is allowed to assume responsibility of their personal growth.
TEAM WORK: Individual technical skills and competence are essential but people also need to learn to work as a team in-groups. Stellar firmly believes that the primary job of a leader is to facilitate rather than control. The team that produces the best result is the one where the Leader actively supports its members in their performance. Stellar encourages teamwork between the employees in the organization. Hence, great emphasis is given to the various Team Building Programs and the employees are exposed to learn these skills through modern professional help.
PLANNED CAREER PATH: Well-planned Career Charts for all the Employees in each department which tells an employee where his/her career would reach in the Organization.
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DATA RECOVERY SERVICES FROM FLOODED COMPUTER SYSTEMS BY STELLAR -
Cyclone Gonu (equivalent of Category 1 hurricane) had severely affected many business organizations in Oman in 2007. The estimated damages are to the tune of US$3.9 billion. Thousands of computer systems were affected due water logging. Computer hard drive containing business critical have been damaged causing severe data loss. Stellar Information Systems Ltd provided specialized services in providing data recovery from 'flood affected' hard drives and other storage media. Stellar had serviced many companies in the past to recover data from similar disasters. Many large companies were affected by Tsunami and floods in Mumbai during 2004 and caused major damages to many organizations.
RECOVERY CAPABILITIES
Data Recovery from Logical Crashes provided in instances of Data Loss due to:
Accidental formatting of Hard disk Invalid Drive / Disk Specifications Accidental Deletion of Data even from Recycle bin Data Lost due to virus attacks Missing File/Directory
Stellar offers Data Recovery Services for all Operating Systems Windows NT/2000/XP, UNIX, LINUX, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, Windows 95/98/ME, OS –2, Mac, HP-UX, Sun Solaris and Novell.
Expert services provided to recover data from all major storage devices Hard disk drives, Floppy disks, I-omega, CDROM, I-omega Jazz, DAT, DLT, USB Drives and other storage media.
Hard drive recovery expertise on almost all imp File Systems FAT12, FAT16, FAT32,NFS, NTFS, HPFS, UFS, Ext2, Ext3 and others.
Data Recovery from Physically Crashed Hard disk Recovery of physically crashed hard disks often involves replacing failed or damaged components using specialized hardware and software tools failed components typically
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include electronics components, read/write heads, head assemblies, magnets & drive motors. Stellar is equipped with the latest technology of Head transplantation, wherein if your Hard disk is not getting detected by the BIOS we transplant or remove the faulty components inside the media to recover the data.
Specialized Services Stellar offers
Raid Data Recovery Services for Enterprise Storage Systems (RAID, SAN, NAS Devices & Plain Servers) Regardless of the size, configuration, operating system or platform of Enterprise Storage System, whether it be a File Server, Database Server or Web Server configured on different volumes which may be spanned, duplexed / mirrored or striped across many drives, Data recovery services offered by Stellar can restore data from such complex storage configurations. Apart from Data Recovery Services, Stellar deals in Data Recovery software as well. Since Stellar has its own R&D, so it develops its Proprietary Software, which helps in Data Recovery & Data safety.
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CLIENTS OF STELLAR DATA RECOVERY
AIIMS. Essar Cell phone. National Feritilizers Ltd. AICTE. Eicher Goodearth. National SC/ST Fin. & Dev. Apollo Hospital. Ericsson. Corporation. Apollo Tyres. Ford Foundation Ganga National Hydro Power Aqua Cross. Contract & Project Ltd. Corporation. Army HQ. General Motors Pvt. Ltd. National Thermal Power Bangladesh High Commission. GE capital. Corporation. Bank Of America. HDFC. NASSCOM. BHEL. Hero Cycles. NCRB. BLB. Hero Honda PAAM Pharmaceuticals. Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. Hindustan Lever Ltd. Pepsi Foods Ltd. Birla Home Finance. Hindustan Sanitary Ware & Punjab National Bank. Bharti telenet. Inds. Ltd. Press Information Bureau. Bharti Celluar. Hindustan Coca –Cola Punjab Police . Bank of India. Beverages. Red Cross. Bharat Petroleum. Hyundai Motors. Reserve Bank Of India. Bajaj Electricals ltd. Honda Express Co Ltd. RPG Satellite Communication. Cadbury's Hughes Software Systems. Reliance. Castrol India Ltd. Honda Siels Cars India Ltd. Ranbaxy. Central Bank Of India. HSBC. Ray Ban. Central Bureau of Investigation. ICICI SamTel. Central Excise (India) Income Tax Dept. Schwabe. Cisco Systems Ltd. Indian Road Congress. State Bank Of India. Container Corporation Of India. Indo Rama. Sony India Pvt.Ltd. Cosmo Ferrite's Ltd. IPP. Steel Authority of India Ltd. Cottage Industries Exposition. Indian Oil Corporation Limited. Samsung India. Cyber Media. IGNOU. TalbrosTelco Ltd. Coca Cola India. Jawaharlal Nehru University. Tata Home Finance Ltd. Cabinet Secretariat. KPMG. Thomson Press. Corporation Bank. LML Ltd. TATA Infotech. Citibank. Larsen and Tubro. Times Of India. Delhi University. Maruti Udyog. The Bank Of Nova Scotia. DLF Cement. McDonalds. The Karnataka Bank Ltd. Dominos Pizza (I) Ltd. Mckinsey & Company. Unicorp. Dr. Williamson Magor Mexx. Unit Trust of India. Environmental Minda Huf Ltd. Vai. Causes Organisation. Modi Care. Vigyan Prasar. Eureka Forbes. Modi Xerox. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. Electorlux Kelvinator Limited. Mccann Ericsson. Wipro . Escorts Limited. Motorola. .
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AWARDS, REVIEWS AND RECOGNITION FOR STELLAR
Stellar data recovery has received wide acclaims for its wide range of softwares that it has developed. The various software offerings have also got good reviews in various magazine polls.
Feed backs and ratings received by Stellar Windows recovery
Feedbacks, Awards and ratings for Stellar Mac Recovery.
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LEARNINGS FROM INTERNSHIP
HARD DISK
The hard disk drive is the "data centre" of the PC. All of the programs and data are stored in a hard disk between the occasions that we use the computer. A hard disk (or disks) are the most important of the various types of permanent storage used in PCs (the others are CD-ROMs, tapes, removable drives, floppy disks etc.) It or the hard disk differs from the others FIGURE 2 primarily in three ways: size (usually larger), speed source: (usually faster) and permanence (usually fixed in the PC img.bhs4.com/2e/5/2e5a38e0118a70ec0a and not removable). 0b821d3f24c9585a09a5ec_large.jpg
The hard disk plays a very important role in overall system performance. Most people don‘t recognize the importance of hard disk. This is now changing. hard drives are now getting more attention than they deserve. The speed at which the PC boots up or a program loads is directly proportional to hard disk speed.
The hard disk, also called the hard drive or fixed disk, Hard disk is the primary storage unit of the computer. A hard disk consists of a stack of disk platters that are made up of aluminium alloy or glass substrate coated with a magnetic material & protective layers. They are tightly sealed to prevent any foreign matter from getting inside. If any particle gets inside, it may causes head crash. Hard disks come in removable and fixed varieties. Their memory capacity may also differ from several hundreds of megabytes to several gigabytes. The capacity or amount of information that a drive can store is measured in bytes and higher units at megabytes or gigabytes and even terabytes.
A hard disk uses round, flat disks called platters. Platters are coated on both sides with a special media material. This material is designed to store information in the form of magnetic patterns. The platters are mounted by cutting a hole in the center. Platters are stacked in through them onto a spindle. The platters are made to rotate at high speed, driven by a special spindle motor which is connected to the spindle. Special electromagnetic
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read/write devices called heads are mounted onto sliders. These heads are used to either record information onto the disk or read information from it. The sliders are mounted onto arms, that are mechanically connected into a single assembly. The system is positioned over the surface of the disk by a device called an actuator. A logic board controls the activity of the other components and communicates with the rest of the PC.
Each surface of both the platters on the disk can hold tens of billions of individual bits of data. These are organized into larger "chunks" for convenience. These chunks are then allowed for easier and faster access to information. Each platter has two heads, one on the top of the platter and one on the bottom, so a hard disk with three platters (normally) has six surfaces and six total heads. Each platter has information recorded in the form of concentric circles called tracks. Each tracks are further broken down into smaller pieces called sectors, each of those sectors holds 512 bytes of information.
FIGURE 3 Source: Original image © Western Digital Corporation
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TRACKS AND SECTORS The Platters are organized into specific structure, so as to enable organized storage and retrieval of data. Each platter is broken into tracks which are tightly- packed in concentric circles. This may number upto tens of thousands of them in each hard disk. -- These are similar in structure to the annual rings of a tree Unlike the grooves in a vinyl record album, here the concentric figure 4source: circles do not form any connected spiral and not http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geo concentric rings m/tracks.htm
A track which holds too much information to be suitable as the smallest unit of storage on a disk, so each one can be further broken down into sectors. A sector is the smallest individually-addressable unit of information that can be stored on a hard disk, and holds up to 512 bytes of information. The first PC hard disks had 17 sectors per track. Today's hard disks have thousands of sectors in a single track. They make use of zoned recording so that it allows more FIGURE 5 sectors on the larger outer tracks of the disk. http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd /geom/tracks.htm
FIGURE 6 source : original image © seagate technology
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TYPES OF HARD DISK CRASH
Physical Crash:- When drive is making a ticking or a scratching noise due to age or bad parts, the aperture arm in the hard drive can fail, failed motors or the platters can become damaged and lose the data that they hold. Physical damage could also be due to mishandling of the drive or circuit failure of the PCB board which is attached to the hard drive. Physical damage always causes at least some data loss, and in many cases due to physical damage the logical structures of the file system also may get damaged, all such damages constitute physical crashes of hard drive. Another physical issue that sometimes rears up is an electronic failure. If we look at a hard drive we will notice a circuit board on the bottom. This board is basically the brains of the drive, and it is where the computer interfaces to the hard drive. An electrical failure can occur unexpectedly at any time. Even brand new hard drives are not totally immune to having electrical failures. Sometimes it's just a faulty component; sometimes it's improper installation (i.e. electro-static discharge, grounding out the board, damaging circuitry during installation).
Logical Crash:- Far more common than physical damage is logical damage to a file system. Logical damage is primarily caused by human error which includes accidental deletion of files, accidentally formatting drive and power outages may cause file system structures getting damaged, causing a variety of problems, system crashes, or an actual loss of data. Logical failures are usually a result of file-system corruption. This can occur due to a virus, accidental deletion of key files or registry components, and in some cases even electro-static discharge. In most cases where a logical failure has occurred, the drive is still recognized by the system BIOS, but it will not boot. In most cases, the data should still be intact on the drive, even though it may appear to be inaccessible.
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CAUSES OF DATA LOSS
Human error 32% Software Corruption 25% Virus attack 22% Hardware error 13% Sabotage 06%
Natural disasters 02%
FIGURE 7
Human Error is the single largest contributor to incidents of data loss. Common human errors include
Accidental drive format Erroneous file/folder deletion MIS/Administrator errors, Mishandling Trauma caused by drop or fall
Software Corruption
Popular desktop operating systems have reported to have hung and caused severe damage to disk systems area resulting in data loss. Incidents when popular applications like word- processor, spread sheet, database, and email have caused corruption resulting in data loss are widespread.
Computer Viruses
Wide spread instances of severe data loss have been reported when anti-virus software could not stop a virus from causing severe damage or when an anti-virus was not updated.
Sabotage
Cases of sabotage are being reported regularly and are increasing at alarming rate. A majority of organizations still do not have a security policy. Unauthorized intrusions and damages caused by disgruntled employees and business competitors have resulted in Major Data Loss.
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STATISTICS ABOUT LEADING CAUSES OF DATA LOSS Despite technological advances in the reliability of magnetic storage media, data loss continues to rise, making data recovery more important than ever. Engineers have identified three trends that are leading to this increase in lost data.
FIGURE 8 More data is being stored in smaller spaces. Today's source:www.besecurenetworks.com hard drives store 500 times the data stored on the /images/data_loss.png drives of a decade ago. Increasing storage capacities amplify the impact of data loss, making mechanical precision more critical.
1. Data has become more mission-critical. Hospital patient records. A graduate school thesis. Personal finance and tax information. Payroll records. Users today are storing more information electronically than ever. The loss of mission critical data can have staggering financial, legal and productivity ramifications on businesses and home users alike. 2. Backup tools and techniques are not 100% reliable. Most computer users rely on backups as their safety net in the event of data loss (a recommended practice). Secondary researches indicates that 80% of data loss customers regularly back up their data, only to find them less than adequate at the critical moment they need to restore them. Backups assume that hardware and storage media are in working order; that the data is not corrupted, and that your backup is recent enough to provide full recovery. In reality, hardware and software do fail and backups don't always contain current enough data.
LEADING CAUSES OF DATA LOSS Hardware or System Malfunctions (44% of all data loss)
Possible Symptoms Error message stating the device is not recognized Previously accessible data suddenly gone Scraping or rattling sound Hard drive not spinning
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Computer hard drive doesn't function
Examples Electrical failure Head/media crash Controller failure
Preventive Measures Protect electrical components by using computers in a dry, shaded, dust-free area Protect against power surges with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) Do not shake or remove the covers on hard drives or tapes.
Human Error (32% of all data loss)
Possible Symptoms Previously accessible data suddenly gone Message similar to "File Not Found"
Examples Accidental deletion or drive format Trauma caused by drop or fall
Preventive Measures Never attempt any operation, like installations or repairs, with which you don't have experience Avoid moving your computer, especially when it's in operation
Software Corruption (14% of all data loss)
Possible Symptoms System messages relating to memory errors Software application won't load Error message stating data is corrupted or inaccessible
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Examples Corruption caused by diagnostic or repair tools Failed backups Configuration complexity
Preventive Measures Back up data regularly Use diagnostic utilities with caution
Computer Viruses (7% of all data loss)
Possible Symptoms Blank screen Strange and unpredictable behavior Error message stating "File Not Found" Message announcing virus appears on screen
Examples Boot sector viruses File infecting viruses Polymorphic viruses
Preventive Measures Use a good anti-virus package Obtain software from reputable sources Scan all incoming data, including packaged software, for viruses Do not install cracked softwares or pirated versions
Natural Disasters (3% of all data loss)
Possible Symptoms While floods and earthquakes have obvious symptoms, brownouts and lightning strikes often leave no clues
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Examples Fires Floods Brownouts
Preventive Measures Store tested backups in an off-site location Install a UPS Don't store critical data in a flood plain
WHAT IS DATA RECOVERY?
When put simply, data recovery is the process of retrieving computer data that, for any number of reasons, has become inaccessible using normal methods. Many prominent data recovery facilities have a large array of hardware, software and tools for recovering data.
Generally speaking when a hard drive is received by a data recovery firm, the first thing they do is evaluate it, and determine what recovery solution will be necessary. If the drive failure is a logical issue as mentioned earlier, then a scan of the drive will be performed to try and repair the file system corruption. Sometimes a partition can be repaired and the drive restored to the status that it was before the failure. If this is not possible, then a very low-level scan will be performed that essentially searches every sector of the hard drive for files. Once the files are located, they can then be copied to the media of choice, i.e. a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or another hard drive. Logical recoveries can take up an enormous amount of time, especially if the drive is on the verge of physical failure. It's not uncommon to allow for one day of scanning and a day for recovering the found files.
If the drive has suffered a physical failure, then the recovery procedure is quite a bit more challenging. As mentioned above, there are really two sub-categories of physical failure; mechanical and electronic. An important element in recovering data from a physical failure is having the necessary parts to get the drive functioning again. Unfortunately with hard drives if is 20GB Samsung Hard Drive for example, then we will need another identical 20GB Samsung Hard Drive for salvaging parts. In cases where the electronic circuit board has failed on the hard drive, then we need to have the exact same circuit board on hand in order to retrieve the necessary circuit components for replacement. Many times we cannot even exchange circuit board for circuit board. These repairs generally require soldering skills and a Rajagiri Business School Page 37
thorough knowledge of electronics to be successfully completed. We will most likely hear "Class100 Clean Room" thrown around a lot when talking to data recovery professionals. Simply stated, a Class100 Clean Room maintains exceptional air purity, and contains less than 100 airborne particles larger than 0.5 microns in each cubic foot of air. This is vital in protecting sensitive internal components of hard drives. Anytime a hard drive is having an invasive procedure performed on it, a Class100 clean room or better is needed
The availability of companies offering recovery services and software spans a wide range from large firms to small shops and from totally dedicated shops to firms offering a broad array of computer-related products and services. One good thing to remember — many of these companies will only charge if they are successful in recovering some data. If they can't help you with your data problem, you usually don't have to pay.
How does the process often work? First, you contact a service. Usually they advise you how to send them your media. Once they receive it, they evaluate it as to how much data can be recovered. They will then give you a price quote and an idea of the data that is recoverable. Some companies have fixed prices per type of media or size of job; other companies cost out each job individually. You then both approve of the work order and have the work done, or you politely decline their offer and have the media returned to you.
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SOFTWARE SERVICES OF STELLAR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRIVATE LIMITED
(a)Data Recovery:
Windows data Recovery Novell Linux CD-ROM Macintosh(HFS &HFS+) Photo Unix (b)File Recovery:
Windows file recovery Deleted file recovery Word recovery Excel recovery Access recovery Zip (c) Email recovery:
Mailbox Standard Outlook PST repair Exchange Desktop (d)Prevent Data loss:
Stellar Data Care Suite Stellar Shield Stellar InstaBackup Stellar SMART (e) Safe Data Eraser
STELLAR SMART:-
Monitor Hard Drive Performance
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Stellar Smart is a utility that acts as an "early warning system" for pending hard disk problems. The system is based on Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T). The hard disk's integrated controller works with various sensors to monitor various aspects of the drive's / disk's performance and determines from this information if the disk is behaving normally or not. File system data structures of a drive have suffered serious corruption or overwriting and data recovery software cannot scan such drives.
This drive monitoring software gives the current values of various hard disk parameters such as Temperature, Head Flying Height, Spin-Up Time etc and compares these values to a Threshold value below / above which the hard disk is likely to fail. The moment any one of the current values equals or exceeds the threshold value, the utility displays a warning of impending problems.
The fundamental principle behind S.M.A.R.T is that many problems with hard disks don't occur suddenly. They result from a slow degradation of various mechanical or electronic components. The hard disks parameters usually exhibit a gradual, detectable decline in performance and it is when a parameter value approaches its safety limit that the Stellar Smart issues a warning.
KEY FEATURES:
Runs constantly in the background, thereby providing real-time information about the condition of the hard drive / disk(s). Provides standard hard disk information such as Serial/Model Number, Number of cylinders, and so on. Provides information on various hard disks attributes and also displays their fitness level. Able to scan and display bad sectors on hard disk(s). Scheduler to configure software parameters such as Temperature Warning, Temperature Update, and Log Scheduling. Maintains log reports of disk scans, disk status and so on. Can clone hard disks (that is, it can paste the contents of a potentially fatal disk onto a healthy disk). Provides graphical comparison of temperature fluctuations in relation to warning / shutdown levels.
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Displays real time 'Benchmark' graph showing the Hard Disk data transfer rate and CPU usage. Can test any IDE/SATA disk. Simple and easy to use, with no loss in system performance.
STELLAR PHOENIX CD ROM - DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARE
Stellar Phoenix - CD Data Recovery Software is a powerful, easy to use cd file recovery tool which provides data recovery from damaged or defective CDROM, CD-R, and CD-RW. Provides recovery of data and file, lost due to unreadable, scratched, corrupt or defective CD media. Phoenix CD Data Recovery Software supports ISO9660 and Joliet file system. Phoenix CD file Recovery software, having an easy and intuitive GUI interfaces rescues your data and writes it to a different location
KEY FEATURES:
File recovery from damaged CDROM, CD-R and CD-RW. Data recovery when TOC (Table of Contents) is bad or damaged. Fully automatic CD Data Recovery software provides data recovery even after primary volume descriptor and secondary volume descriptor are corrupt or physically damaged. Data recovery when data cannot be accessed and disk indicates that it is full. Provides file recovery when disk has physical damages: scratch, bubbles, cracks and warping. Provides CD data recovery when computer freezes when trying to read the disk.
Provides CD file recovery when disk has data but appears blank or displays as audio disk.
FILE SYSTEM SUPPORTED:
Provides Data recovery from CD with ISO9660 and Joliet file system created on all major operating systems including Windows, Linux, Unix distributions.
SYSTEMS REQUIREMENT:
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OS: Windows NT/2000/XP. 64MB RAM (Recommended 128 MB) 5MB Free Hard Disk Space
SOFTWARE LICENSE OPTIONS:
Single User License Administrator License Technician License
SOFTWARE INTERFACE LANGUAGES:
English, French, Italian, German, Spanish
STELLAR INSTABACK:
InstaBackup is very useful software for backing up and protecting valuable data. This software simplifies the process of data backup and is a powerful solution for both business and personal needs. It can also be used both in a networking environment and on a single machine. Although the software is easy to use, a number of advanced options such as Full / Incremental backups, strong File Encryption, and Zip Compression are also available.
The software has a simple graphical user interface, requires no prior knowledge of data backup, and is a comprehensive data protection solution for all Windows File Systems.
KEY FEATURES:
Built in Scheduler to automate the data backup process (It is possible for a user to ‗schedule‘ the frequency of automatically creating backups – daily, weekly, monthly, and so on) Various storage media for backups such as Hard Drive's / Disk‘s, LAN‘s, Remote FTP Servers (remote / online backup), DVD / CD-RW devices and Pen Drives. Two different modes of backing up – Full (in which all data / files are backed up afresh during the rerun of a particular Backup Task) and Incremental (in which only modified files are backed up during the rerun of a particular Backup Task). Strong File Encryption (to make backups secure) and Zip Compression (to make backups compact and less space-consuming).
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Facility to create and save unique ‗Backup Tasks‘ in which specific sets of files can be grouped together and get backed up periodically, Backup Utilities such as File Filter (to include/exclude specific files in a data backup process), Confirmation e-mails after backup jobs, Pre/Post Backup Task Programs (to automatically run any program before and/or after a backup process), and so on.
STELLAR DATA CARE SUITE - A COMPLETE DATA SAFETY PACK
Stellar Data Care Suite is a comprehensive data protection software suite designed to safeguard your data from almost any form of data loss. The suite consists of three applications which together take care of all your data safety & protection needs.
Stellar InstaBackup: InstaBackup is software for backing up and protecting your most valuable data. It is a simple yet powerful backup solution for business / personal needs in a networking environment or on a single machine. Using this software, it is possible for a user to select anything from one file to an entire drive to be backed up.
Stellar Smart: Even if data is backed up, it is possible that the safety of the backup itself is compromised if the hard disk suffers a mechanical and/or electrical fault. Stellar Smart is software that provides advance warnings of impending hard disk problems. It does this by continuously monitoring various hard disk parameters (such as Temperature, Spin Up Time, Raw Read Error Rate, and so on), and then comparing these values to a threshold value above/below which the hard disk is likely to fail.
Stellar Shield: This is pre-crash data protection software that provides data restoration after any form of logical data loss. Once installed, Shield takes a snapshot of critical system attributes and information and stores it in your hard disk. In the event of any data loss, Shield searches the backup Image and helps recover/restore all the data immediately.
KEY FEATURES:
Pre-crash data protection.
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Covers maximum risk of data loss. Automated regular data backup. Restores data after any form of logical data loss. Constantly monitors the health of hard disk.
SYSTEMS REQUIREMENT:
Operating System: Win 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP Minimum32Mb RAM (recommended 64Mb) Hard Drive: IDE/EIDE/ATA/SATA Type
• Stellar InstaBackup – 2Mb Free space (minimum) • Stellar Smart – 5Mb Free space (minimum), Requires ADMINISTRATIVE RIGHTS • Stellar Shield – 150Mb Free space (minimum), Requires ADMINISTRATIVE RIGHT • All Products – 200Mb of Free Space
SOFTWARE LICENSE OPTIONS:
Single User License
SOFTWARE INTERFACE LANGUAGES
English
STELLAR WIPE - SAFE FILE ERASER
Wipe, Erase, Overwrite, Destroy, Eliminate Data and Files Stellar Wipe is an extremely powerful and effective data cleansing software. Stellar Wipe erases selected files and folders, wipes entire drive, cleans unused space on your hard disk and also removes Internet activities (History, Cookies, Favourites, Temporary Internet Files etc), System traces and Application traces (MS applications, Email & News, Chat messengers, NetMeeting etc) from your computer.
Software ensures complete data destruction by removing previously deleted files / folders. The file eraser utility also wipes free space (unused space) on the hard drive ensuring complete Data Destruction. Any wipe task can be done manually or according Rajagiri Business School Page 44
to the schedule set in the Wipe Scheduler. Wipe list option maintains the list of files and folders to be wiped in one go.
Extremely secure algorithms which conform to the various standards are used to ensure permanent data deletion. It is thus a complete solution for computer privacy. The Data once erased using Stellar Wipe is beyond the recovery limit of any Data Recovery Software.
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SWOT ANALYSIS
STRENGTH
Stellar Information Technology Private Limited has a worldwide presence. And has more than 1 million satisfied clients. It is the only private company that has class 100 clean room in india. The other class 100 clean room available is in IIT Bombay, powai which is specifically used for research purpose that too only under strict norms and regulations. The company guarantees 100% result in data recovery as per the assessment report which is generated within 24 hours of submission of faulty media.
The company has its own proprietary tools and techniques for data recovery unlike others who use 3rd party softwares for data recovery. The company provides employment for over 150 engineers, who are specialized in data recovery. Stellar data recovery has a spare hard disk inventory with more than 12,000 hard disk of almost all known specification and configuration available in the country. Stellar ensures that every hard disk being available in the market are being stocked into its hard disk inventory so that in specific cases of damages, the spare device of exact same configuration is available in its inventory.
More than 100 R&D specialists are being employed by Stellar Data Recovery. The software development and support team of stellar are known for the efficient softwares they have made. Stellar has a dedicated technical support team and 24*5 helpdesk. Stellar Information Technology Private limited has more than 30 Indigenous data recovery softwares under its name. Hence the brand name of Stellar can be considered to be strong when compared to its competitors.
Stellar Data recovery is the only Data recovery company that has a pan-India presence which includes all 4 metropolitan cities and most of other major cities in india. The pan India presence helps in speedy recovery of data and improves collection and delivery timing of media devices.
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WEAKNESS
The major weakness of the company is its pricing policy which is 2-3 times higher than the market rates at which 3rd party vendor does recovery services. Stellar has a priority service plan which enables users to have their devices to have a higher priority. In cases of mass damage of data storage devices as in cases of a natural calamity or a virus attack, strict adherence to priority service could backfire as customers may go for other service providers who may offer flexible priority plans.
Local data recovery service providers and 3rd party data recovery service providers have shown little interest in consulting stellar even in cases of severely damaged devices. The brand perception that stellar has created is that Stellar is an international brand that caters to high end corporates and multi- national companies.
Stellar Data recovery is yet to start an aggressive marketing campaign, which could increase the brand awareness about stellar among the potential customers. Lack of man power in the sales force could also be considered to be a weakness of the company.
OPPORTUNITIES
The potential of the company to grow is huge. There is a large untapped market in the data recovery segment which is still being occupied by 3rd party vendors and local data recovery vendors. These local data recovery vendors include freelancers as well as small shops that solely uses the software solutions provided by Stellar Data Recovery. Signing up or entering into a tie up with these 3rd party vendors could greatly boost the sales figures of the company. These vendors could be carefully moulded into partners rather than categorizing them as competittors by means of contracts or commission for sending clients etc.
The digitalization of governance and administration has improved the number of digital data storage devices.. Large number of schools and colleges has moved into digital platform for keeping records. The Big Data or large chunks of data are being generated by automated systems they need to be stored for later use. As the number of digital data storage devices increases, chances of encountering faulty data storage device also increased.
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THREATS
Easy availability of open source softwares like recuva, advancement of open source operating systems like Linux provides options for easy recovery of data from logical crashes is a threat to Stellar Data Recovery. Online piracy and easy availability of cracked versions of Software solutions offered by Stellar does possess an instant threat to the company.
The entry barrier to get into data recovery industry is low. With the help of desired toolkits and instruments any player can get into this nascent industry. This could easily intensify the competition and thus hamper the profit margins of the company
Customers are often inclined towards low priced products instead of quality. Often customers trade off confidentiality and quality of service to lower service charges.
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COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
UNISTAL SYSTEMS PRIVATE LIMITED
Unistal Systems Pvt. Ltd. New Delhi, India is the data recovery industry‘s largest, most experienced and technologically advanced provider of data recovery products and services. In case of any kind of data loss on any type of computer storage media, Unistal has a solution with fast, advanced and cost-effective products and services – ranging from do-it-yourself software products, data loss prevention solutions to 24/7/365 services network. . In case of any kind of data loss on any type of
FIGURE 9 computer storage media, Unistal has a solution with fast, advanced and cost-effective products and services – ranging from do-it-yourself software products, data loss prevention solutions to 24/7/365 services network. With nearly 10 years‘ experience performing successful data recoveries, Unistal has served customers across the globe including Secret services, government agencies, corporate houses, and numerous computer users. Unistal has developed the industry's widest range of data recovery products and services, providing desktop, laptop, server, email, database and tape recoveries for all media types and operating systems – anywhere, anytime. Unistal India is headquartered in New Delhi. With regional offices at Mumbai, Bengluru, Kolkatta
DISK DOCTORS LAB INCORPORATED
Disk Doctor Labs Inc. has been serving the US and worldwide since 1991 and speedily becoming the leader in data recovery from storage devices. Disk Doctors operates worldwide from labs in United States, UK, Australia & India. Today Disk Doctors offers the most comprehensive services available in this specialised field. Disk Doctor Labs Inc. invests huge chunk of their profits toward research and development of data recovery techniques for ever-changing challenges and cost effective solutions for our customers.
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Disk Doctor Labs Inc. has been performing data recovery for individuals, multinational corporations, educational institutions and government agencies since 1991. Disk Doctor Labs Inc. is one of the most trusted and respected data recovery company in United States and around the world. Goal of Disk Doctors is to bring our clients halted operations back into working conditions with FIGURE 10 quickest, cost effective and quality data recovery. Disk Doctors India is specialists in data recovery and recovers all or most of the data that can possibly be salvaged from the situation at hand. Data recovery- specialists work diligently with our software department to come up with proprietary methods and software utilities, to keep up with the ever changing hardware and software solutions for different kind of storage devices. Disk Doctor India Operates from Bengaluru.
CBL DATA RECOVERY TECHNOLOGIES
FIGURE 11 CBL Data Recovery Technologies. is a leading provider of expert data recovery services throughout Australia and Internationally. CBL's only business is to recover data - quickly and cost effectively. Whether the data loss is the result of mechanical or electrical failure, virus activity, system malfunctions, human error, water, fire or smoke damage, or file corruption, CBL has the uniquely talented people and the resources in-house to solve the problem. Through innovation and creativity, values that all CBL staff share, they strive to offer comprehensive and efficient data recovery services to all of the clientele. CBL Data Recovery Technologies operates from Mumbai
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CONCLUSION
Significant growth in data recovery industries has caught the eyes of many .Now there is so many companies into Data Recovery .They recover data through software if there is logical crash and if there is physical crash or physical cum logical crash then media is being brought into lab, where data recovery process is being done. Now many companies use their proprietary software to recover data. In case of physical crash, they recover data by opening media in their lab. Important point to be noted is that Stellar is the only company, which has class 100 clean room.
Class 100 clean room is manufacturer referred standard environment, where in a media should be opened. In Class 100 clean room size of dust particle is less than 100 micron. Considering rarest of rare cases wherein dust particle would settle on the platter then also it would not create any crash on platter. So data is not loss.
Taking of Data Recovery Services in India, Stellar does not as such have any competitors, because Stellar Information Technology is the only company in India, which has class 100 clean rooms, R&D and the required infrastructure, So Stellar can be considered as the best capable data recovery company in India.
Many other companies also say, they have clean room lab, where they recover data from crashed media in case of physical crash and logical cum physical crash. But their clean room lab is not meeting the condition of manufacturer referred environment for opening of media. Hence, they are not as capable as stellar in recovering data from crashed media.
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PROSPECTS OF DATA RECOVERY INDUSTRIES IN INDIA:
In the present scenario, computers run our lives, our homes and our businesses. Most of us use computers every single day. So data recovery becomes even more important in cases of computer crashes and valuable data becoming inaccessible. Data recovery means retrieving data from damaged, failed, corrupted or inaccessible primary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally.
RISE OF TECHNOLOGY:
The growth of technology has sparked off the increase in number of commercial organizations across the economy. Big corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships, multinationals and small manufacturing enterprises have been flooding the market. This vertical and horizontal rise of technology can be attributed to growing consumer demand. Consumers want more today. Hence this has led to inter- and intra-dependency of firms and industries in the economy. No firm can exist without the presence of the other. Everything has shrunk and contributed to the growth and importance of data. Data has grown over the years by leaps and bounds. Everybody, right from commercial ventures, government enterprises to personal users saves data. The importance of data has increased greatly. The loss of this data can paralyze economic functions and signal a downward economy spiral. Organizations and users need data for healthy economic operation. Data such as financial records, employee information and patient details in hospitals are stored on data storage devices. These machines are not perfect and are liable to corruption. When this happens data is lost. All work, growth and progress come to a grinding halt. This is where data recovery comes in. The data recovery industry functions on the fear that precious data can be lost any time. Globalisation: The world today has shrunk figuratively. Outsourcing employment has become the new age mantra. Globalisation has taken over. A direct consequence of this has been the ever-increasing importance of data. Today, businesses all over the world need data to survive in the global market. Reliance and dependency on data has risen sharply since 1990s. Different commercial enterprises trading and dealing in different economic sectors need and want common data. Interdependence has increased. This has directly impacted the
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data recovery industry in a positive way. Data recovery business has grown and is still growing.
OUTLOOK
Storage has definitely become a major component of IT infrastructure. Our economy is improving and hence we can expect Storage to become a key area of the IT budget. The implementation of data-intensive applications like CRM, and business expansion are driving growth in storage requirement. Data security and data recovery are now the most significant focus areas within the storage space. Although a majority of storage investments will come from the SME segment, one should also keep an eye on the large enterprises.
POTENTIAL SEGMENTS:
Indian businesses have come to realize the seriousness of this issue and, hence, banking and financial sector, the software and ITES companies and lately manufacturing and retail segments are driving the growth of the Data Recovery market in the country. Significantly, companies have realized that disaster management and recovery are more than incidental IT expenses. Large enterprises have started building the data loss prevention factor as an integral element in their annual maintenance contracts or service level agreements with IT service providers and local channel partners.
CONCLUSION:
Lately, in India, an increase in the level of competition and market demands, together with increased dependence on technology for core business processes has necessitated the need for data recovery by companies. Another sector which has grown tremendously is the software and ITES sector. The latter particularly depends on the volume of calls and the access to records on a 24X7 basis. Any downtime could be detrimental to their business. As corporate networks get complex and data capture and storage becomes challenging, the industry is bound to see a shift towards replication of critical resources, business applications and processes. Data recovery as a networking solution, although new at this point of time, will become routine for corporates in near future.
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SECTION-II
PROBLEM CENTERED STUDY OF THE ORGANIZATION
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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
Research is an organized inquiry carried out to provide information for solving problems. Management in any organization need information about the potential market and to design plans as per the changing Market scenario. Marketing research includes all the activities that enable an organization to obtain the vital information. This research is very important in strategy formation and Promotion of the company.
There are many type of research these can be categorized as reporting, descriptive, explanatory or predictive. Each research type is being used for various purposes. In this research I have used explorative research methodology; I tried to figure out opportunities and future threats lying in the market for Stellar Information Technology Private Limited. and tried to promote the company and enhance its awareness in the market.
Research design is the plan, structure and strategy of investigation conceived so as to obtain to research problem. It is the specification of methods and procedures for acquiring the required information.
RESEARCH AND IMPORTANCE OF MY WORK: -
In this project, I used exploratory research. The basic aim of my project was to find the problems faced by stellar information technology private limited with regards to the sale, brand awareness, service quality. The competition provided by the local vendors is stiff and serious. Brand value of stellar wasn‘t fully transforming into sales. The 3rd party dealers and AMC providers, who is generally the first point of contact with the customers, play a vital role in positioning the brand name of stellar in the minds of customers. They are the basic marketers of stellar. They help in creating a brand image in the costumers mind about the products and services offered by Stellar Data Recovery. Thruough this research I tried to figure out the factors they take into account while a data recovery solution provides is required, How a data recovery solution provider is assessed by customers, The satisfaction level of customers with respect to the current service provider, The importance of Advertisements, customer reviews etc. I also tried to figure out the awareness level of customers about Stellar Data Recovery.
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MY FIELD WORK:-
To meet with clients (3rd parties as well as Corporate) Identifying Potential clients. Not a sales job with targets but needs to promote the company products and services. The main products of the company are related to data recovery services. To improve awareness about software offerings of stellar that comes in different suites like (Enterprise suite, Business+ suite, Business suite, Standard suite & PST suite)
DATA COLLECTION & SAMPLING
To achieve the objectives, the primary as well as secondary sources of data are used.
PRIMARY DATA
SECONDARY DATA
PRIMARY DATA: Primary data is that kind of data which was collected by me for the purpose of my specific study. I interviewed without any structured set of questions just to know the brand awareness of the company. The valuable feedbacks, knowledge about company, perception towards its products are some primary data for my research work.
SECONDARY DATA: The data that has been already collected by others but which in turn became useful for my report can be categorized as secondary data. The secondary data was collected from various digital sources including websites and blogs of companies and individuals who works in areas related to hardware industry. The company past reports, various websites, books, and assistance from company employees are my secondary data used in this research.
INTERVIEW METHOD: Interview method helps in getting an insight into the prospective clients mind. I adopted this method as I needed to promote my company in the market as well as try building an image among them. This helped me in gathering personal and professional information regarding data recovery as well the image of stellar in the market. For this purpose, various
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questions were asked randomly to the customers and their vital feedbacks were collected. With this method I was also able to clear the doubts of the customers regarding data recovery issues such as data leakage and data revival possibility in case of physical data damage.
OBSERVATION METHOD: During the project work, I contacted the 3rd parties and Corporate to find their opinion about the Stellar Information Technology Private Limited. In the observation method the researcher himself collects the necessary information by observing the response of the customers. Observation may be conducted on in the natural field or in the form of experiment. I used uncontrolled observation that takes place in the natural setting. Agents and customer are free to express their felling about the product and services offered by the company. The observation method gave me an idea about the satisfaction level of customer and agents and gained the precious knowledge about the market situation which made me understand the need of data recovery in different form of business (manufacturing companies, service companies, 3rd parties etc.) .
TITLE
―Customer Awareness About Data Recovery Services And Solutions Offered By Stellar Information Technology Private Limited In Kochi Location‖
OBJECTIVES
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: To create awareness about data recovery services offered by Stellar Information Technology Private Limited among the customers in Kochi area.
SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: To understand how data recovery services are being availed by customers in Kochi location To know the customer perception about solutions offered by Stellar Information Technology Private limited. To understand data recovery services offered by 3rd parties or local vendors.
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To understand the future prospects of Stellar Information Technology private limited in Kochi location
SAMPLE COLLECTION
Data has been collected from various areas and agencies (3rd Parties as well as Corporate).
Sample size of agents covered: 112
Priority has been given to companies that may require services and softwares offered by Stellar Information Technology Private Limited.
Random Sampling has been taken as no predefined database of companies had been used. Made it a point to have companies from all sort of industries viz: Information technology, Banks, Manufacturing industries, Tours and travels, Laboratories, Advertising agencies etc.
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RESEARCH ANALYSIS
DISTRIBUTION OF SAMPLE POPULATION Chart 1
Distribution of Sample Population
manufacturing Software and other industry industries 35% 35%
Hardware sales & Service stations 30%
TABLE 1
Software development Hardware sales & Manufacturing and Industry Service stations other industries 39 34 39
EXPLANATION: 30% of the companies were from Hard ware sales and Service centres. 35% of the companies were from Software development industry. And rest 35% of the companies belonged to manufacturing and other industries. I made it a point to visit those companies who have higher chances of requiring services offered by stellar data recovery. The sample population consisted of companies based in kakkanad, kadavanthara, kaloor, kalamassery, edayar, binanipuram etc
1) IMPORTANCE OF DATA
Do you consider data essential for day to day working of your company? TABLE 2
Not a priority Low Priority Medium Priority High Priority Essential
1 2 11 55 43
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CHART 2
Importance of Data
Importance Level 80.58%
49% Not a priority 38% Low Priority Medium Priority High Priority Essential 10%
2% 1%
EXPLANATION: 38% of the companies said that data is essential for the day to day working of the company to add to this 49% the companies said data is of high priority for them. Hence it can be easily said that 77% of the companies consider data of great importance. And only 3% of the companies said data is of least priority.
INFERENCE: Data is of great importance for a company. Its importance is only getting increased year after year. The improved operational systems have been ensuring that importance of data will only increase in spite of automated reports being generated by various ERPs and other softwares. The numbers obtained here will give a short glimpse of how important data is for a company. More than 3/4th of the correspondent companies acknowledged that fact that data is of at most importance. And only 3% regarded data as a non-essential part of a business.
FINDINGS Data is important ! Loss of data disrupts the functioning of the company.
INDUSTRY WISE ANALYSIS OF IMPORTANCE OF DATA
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CHART 3
Importance of data Industry wise
Not a priority Low priority Medium priority High Priority Essential
22
18 15 15 15 13
5 4 2 2 1 0 0 0 0
Software development Hardware sales and service manufacturing and other industry industry industries
Importance level-80.76% Importance level-71.15% Importancelevel-79.48%
TABLE 3
Not a Low Medium High Essential Priority Priority Priority Priority Software development 0 0 4 22 13 industry Hardware sales and service 0 2 2 15 15 industry manufacturing and other 1 0 5 18 15 industries
EXPLANATION Data is considered to be essential or high priority by almost all of the companies belonging to software development industry. When it comes hard-ware sector the importance of data is not that much as there are 2 companies that said data is of low priority. When we consider the manufacturing and other industries importance of data is fairly the same as that of software industry except for one company which said data is of no importance for them.
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INFERENCE Importance of data is an unquestionable factor almost 95% of the companies agreed to the factor that data is of some kind of importance to them, either of high priority or essential to the day to day working of the company.
FINDINGS Data is unarguably an important factor across all the three sectors that I have taken into consideration which are Software Development Industry, Hardware Sales and service industry, manufacturing and other industries
2) PREFERRED DATA STORAGE DEVICES
Where do you store data of your company? CHART 4
Preferred Data Storage Devices
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always
51 50 50 49
43 39 36 34 34 31 32 27 26 24 21 21
15 14 13 13
7 7 7 6 7 4 4 2 2 3
Laptop PC harddisk PenDrives Server CD DVD Roms Memmory harddisk Harddisk Cards 73.66% 78.57% 44.41% 49.55% 30.13% 25.66% Preference level
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TABLE 4
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always Laptop hard disk 7 7 21 27 50 PC hard disk 2 7 14 39 50 Pen Drives 6 36 51 15 4 Server Hard disk 31 21 13 13 34 CD DVD Roms 32 43 26 4 7 Memory Cards 34 49 24 2 3
EXPLANATION: Most preferred data storage device continues to be the Hard disk of Personal Computer with 50 correspondents stating that they always store data in the Company Desktop and another 39 correspondents claiming that they often store data in the company desktop. The second most preferred data storage device is the laptop hard disk. 50 correspondents said they use laptop hard disk to store data of the company. The third most preferred choice of data storage device is Server hard disk with 34 correspondents proclaiming that they store data in server hard disk. CD DVD ROMS and Memory cards are used very rarely to store data. While pen drives are being used by 51 correspondents to occasionally store important data.
INFERENCE: It can be easily inferred from the graph that Hard disk is the main data storage device used by various companies to store data. Desktop or PC hard disk still continues to be the data storage device being used by companies. Laptop hard disk is getting more and more prominence as the secondary data storage device. Server hard disks are seemingly useful as the desirable data storage device especially in the IT companies and more advanced companies with efficient systems in place. Pen drives though they enjoy popularity are never considered a reliable data storage device. It may be due to the frequent misplacing of pen drives or may be because of the lower capacity. The same problem can be applicable to Memory cards. Memory cards are not being used as a reliable data storage device apart from photographers or digital studios. CD DVD roms have become obsolete as number of companies that use CD DVD Roms are very rare.
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FINDINGS Laptop hard disk and PC hard disk are the most reliable and frequently used source of Data Storage. Server hard disk is getting to be a popular source of data storage especially across IT Sector. Memory cards, CD/DVD ROMS are not gaining much popularity as a source of data storage device.
3) FAULTY DATA STORAGE DEVICES
How often do you come across faulty Data storage devices (Pen drives, Hard disk)?
CHART 5 Faulty Data Storage Devices
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always
63 59 56 49 43 40 3938 32 31 29 30 26 27 19 15 15 12 11 9 9 4 5 6 1 2 0 0 1 1
Laptop PC harddisk Pendrives Server CD DVD roms Memmory Harddisk Harddisk cards 35.04% 33.92% 39.73% 12.96% 29.91% 28.79% Occurence level
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TABLE 5
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always Laptop Hard disk 15 56 26 11 4 PC hard disk 12 59 31 9 1 Pen Drives 19 27 49 15 2 Server Hard disk 63 40 9 0 0 CD DVD roms 29 39 38 5 1 Memory cards 30 43 32 6 1
EXPLANATION: As the graph shows rarely do companies comes across damaged data storage devices ie yearly once or twice. The hard disks of laptop, desktop rarely gets damaged more than 55 companies agreed to this fact. Server Hard disks are an exception because almost 63 companies agreed to the fact that they have never come across a situation where their server hard disk gets damaged. Pen drives are the least reliable data storage device with 49 companies agreeing to the fact they come across faulty pen drives at a monthly basis.
INFERENCE: The sample population does comes across faulty data storage devices. The hard disks are not perfectly reliable source of data storage. The Server hard disk but are known for their reliability the number of companies that reported a damage to their server on a hard disk on a regular basis was virtually none. The Pen drives are considered to be unreliable data storage devices when compared to the hard disks. CD DVDs are devices that get easily damaged as it gets old. Memory cards, though are reliable they are prone to errors because of the rough usage of the device.
FINDINGS Pendrives are the data storage device that gets damaged most frequently and hence they are considered to be an unreliable source of data storage. Though hard disks are the most used data storage device. They do get damage often. Server hard disk are gaining popularity as they rarely mal functions and can store huge volume of data and are secure.
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4) CONSULTANT IN CASES OF DATA LOSS
Whom did you consult when data storage device gets damaged? TABLE 6
AMC provider Stellar Data Recovery 3rd Party Vendors Others
36 8 35 33
CHART 6
Consultant in cases of Data Loss
AMC provider Stellar Data Recovery 3rd Party Vendors Others
30% 32%
7% 31%
EXPLANTION: 32% of companies consult their AMC provider when they come across damage to data storage devices. 31% of companies consult 3rd party vendors to recover data from damaged data storage device. 7% of the companies said they would consult Stellar data recovery when they get into data loss problem.
INFERENCE: Only 7% of the companies consult stellar data recovery while 31% of the companies consult 3rd party vendors to recover data from damaged data storage devices. This is an opportunity for the company to explore. A tie up with the AMC Provider or the 3rd party vendors in cases of Physical crashes can be of great advantage to the company.
FINDINGS
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AMC providers are the first point of contact for most of the companies in cases of data recovery. 3rd party vendors enjoy a sizeable market share which is 2- 3 times greater than the market share of Stellar in kochi area.
CONSULTANTS IN CASES OF DATA RECOVERY: INDUSTRY WISE. CHART 7
Consultant in cases if data recovery : industry wise
AMC Provider 3rd party vendor Stellar data Recovery Others
19 17 17 15 13 13
5 5 3 3 2 0
Software development Hardware sales and manufacturing and other industry service industry industries
TABLE 7
Stellar data AMC Provider 3rd party vendor Others Recovery Software Development 15 5 5 13 Industry Hardware sales and service 2 17 3 17 Industry Manufacturing and Other 19 13 0 3 Industries
EXPLANATION When it comes to software development industry, 15 correspondents agreed to it that they consult their AMC provider. 13 correspondents said that they consider others (self- checking of the device, using the help of internet and other sources of information) if any data recovery issue comes up. Only 5 correspondents said they would visit 3rd party vendors
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or stellar data recovery. When it comes to hardware sales and service industry, 17 correspondents said they have specialist who can look into data recovery cases if anything comes up. While 17 respondents said they would consult a 3rd party vendor if any comes up. Only 3 companies said they would consult Stellar data recovery in cases of any data recovery issues. When it comes to manufacturing and other industries 19 respondent said that they consult with the AMC provider if any data recovery issue comes up. 13 respondents said that they consult the 3rd party vendors if any data recovery issue comes up.
INFERENCE Brand name of Stellar has much more acceptance in software companies than the other sectors. Software companies are much more willing to consult with stellar than other industries. This can be attributed to the highly important data which they work the hardware service sector consult more with 3rd party vendors rather than Stellar data recovery. AMC providers are the first point of contact when any issues arise to their system. This is same as in cases of data recovery
FINDINGS Brand name Stellar has much more acceptance in Software development industry 3rd party vendors are more trusted consultants in cases of data recovery for the IT hardware- sales and service industry. AMC providers are first point of contact for any system related issue, including data recovery.
5) AWARENESS ABOUT STELLAR DATA RECOVERY
How aware are you about Stellar Data Recovery Solutions? TABLE 8
Not at all aware Slightly Aware Moderately Aware Very Aware Extremely Aware 25 25 37 17 8
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CHART 8
Awareness about Stellar Data Recovery
Awareness level-40.62% 7% 15% 23% Not at all Aware Slighlty Aware Moderately Aware 33% Very Aware 22% Extremely Aware
EXPLANATION 23% of the responders said they were not at all aware of Stellar Data Recovery. 22% said they were slightly aware of Stellar Data Recovery. 33% said they were moderately aware about the company while only 15% were very aware about the company. Only just 7% were extremely aware of Stellar Data Recovery.
INFERENCE Only 22% of the population are aware of Stellar data Recovery. Rest 72% are largely unaware about the company Stellar Data Recovery. This provides further scope for marketing of brand Stellar. The potential for brand Stellar to grow is huge. Effective marketing techniques could be utilized to improve the brand awareness of Stellar Data Recovery.
FINDINGS Awareness about Stellar Data recovery is low.
INDUSTRY WISE AWARENESS ABOUT STELLAR DATA RECOVERY
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CHART 9 Industry wise awareness about Stellar Data Recovery
Not at all aware Slightly aware moderately aware very aware extremely aware
16
12 11 11 11 10 10 7 6 5 4 4 2 2 1
Software development Hardware sales and service manufacturing and other industry industry industries 34.61% 50.64% 31.41% Awareness level
TABLE 9 Not at all Slightly moderately extremely very aware aware aware aware aware Software development 10 12 11 4 2 industry Hardware sales and 4 6 10 11 5 service industry Manufacturing and other 11 7 16 2 1 industries
EXPLANATION In software industry the general awareness about Stellar Data Recovery is on the lower side only 6 respondents were aware about the company prior to me mentioning about the company. This number is even worse when it comes to manufacturing industries only 3 respondent was aware of Stellar. When it comes to Hardware sales and service industry about 26 of the respondents were aware of the company Stellar data recovery.
INFERENCE Rajagiri Business School Page 70
Awareness levels about Stellar data recovery is on the higher side in the hardware sales and service companies when compared to other industries. About 2/3rd of the respondents from hardware sector have come to know about Stellar prior to me mentioning about the company. But this is not the same when compared to other sectors especially in software industry, where data is much more valuable and required. The awareness level is very much on the lower side.
FINDINGS Awareness about Stellar is on higher side in IT hardware sales and service industry.Awareness about Stellar is on lower side across all other industries.
6) FACTORS CONSIDERED IN CASES OF CHOOSING DATA RECOVERY VENDOR
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the strongest influence please rate the following factors that you take into consideration while you consult a data Recovery vendor. CHART 10
Factors Considered in cases of choosing data recovery vendor 10 9 8
7
6 5
4 RatingPoints 3 2 1 0 Confidenti Service Customer Advertisem Expertise Location Experience ality Rates Reviews ents Series1 8.67857143 8.74107143 8.58928571 7.86607143 8.54464286 7.60714286 6.26785714
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TABLE 10
Factors / Points 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Expertise 1 1 0 1 5 1 8 16 40 39 Confidentiality 1 0 1 2 1 1 12 15 38 41 Service Rates 1 1 0 2 3 2 8 24 34 37 Location 1 0 1 1 4 10 12 48 25 10 Experience 1 0 2 0 0 10 11 20 27 41 Customer Reviews 1 1 0 1 5 16 30 22 22 14 Advertisements 2 1 5 7 19 30 20 17 6 5
EXPLANATION: Factors taken into account while consulting a data recovery vendor were classified into expertise, confidentiality, service rates, location, experience, customer reviews and advertisements. Among them the most important factor taken into consideration by most was confidentiality of the data with an average rating of 8.741 out of 10 second came expertise with 8.678 out of 10 which was followed by Service rates with 8.589 out of 10, followed by the experience with 8.544. Location was given an average rating of 7.866 while customer reviews obtained an average rating of 7.607 and advertisements obtained an average of 6.26 which was the least important factor.
INFERENCE: The 4 important factors that were considered by companies while consulting a data recovery vendor are Expertise, Confidentiality, Service Rates and Experience. Stellar Data recovery has been known for the expertise they have acquired with the class 100 clean room and wide set of software as well as hardware tools that they have. Stellar data recovery does maintain confidentiality of data by means of contract of obligation. Stellar data recovery has an experience close to 18 years in data recovery field which makes it one of the earliest players in the field. The Service rates of stellar data recovery are also to be given same importance as that of other 3 factors. Stellar gives equal importance to Location factor and because of this they have opened branches in almost all of the major cities in India
FINDINGS Most important factors taken into consideration by the customers are o Confidentiality Rajagiri Business School Page 72
o Expertise o Experience o Service Rates Lesser important factors are Customer Reviews and Advertisements.
7) DATA RECOVERY SERVICE PROVIDER CURRENT RATINGS
How would you rate the performance of your current data recovery service provider? CHART 11
Ratings of Current Data Recovery Service Provider
Very Poor Poor Fair Good Excellent 49 47 45 46 45
39 40 36 36 36
16 16 16 14 13 14 14 13 11 11
1 1 0 0 1
Time for Servicing Cost of Servicing Reusability of Confidentiality of Overall Service Data Data 60.26% 59.82% 61.83% 62.27% 60.93% Satisfaction Level
Table 11
Factors Very Poor Poor Fair Good Excellent Time for Servicing 1 16 45 36 14 Cost of Servicing 1 16 46 36 13 Reusability of Data 0 14 45 39 14 Confidentiality of Data 0 13 47 36 16 Overall Service 1 11 49 40 11
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EXPLANATION The companies are generally neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with the current service data recovery service providers. The number of responders who choose fair as the option is around 45+ among the sample size of 112 across all the major factors of consideration. around 40% or 35+ responders said they are being offered good services by the service providers. While only 10% or 13 responded that the service they get is of excellent quality.
INFERENCE There is a great bit of competition when it comes to kochi area. The customers in kochi are not generally dissatisfied with their existing service providers. But still they are expecting more from the service provider in terms of time for servicing, Cost of servicing, confidentiality of data and Service rates. This can be considered as an opportunity for Stellar. If Stellar data recovery could utilize their expertise in data recovery field and provide excellent service to the customers they could easily gain a lot of customers who are just being provided satisfactory services by the 3rd paty vendors.
FINDINGS The customers are not dissatisfied with their current service provider. The customer does expect more from the service provider in terms of quality of service being offered.
8) WILLINGNESS TO SWITCH TO NEW DATA RECOVERY PROVIDER
Are you willing to switch to a new data recovery solution provider? TABLE 12
Not at all likely Slightly likely Moderately Likely Very Likely Extremely likely 12 16 26 42 16
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CHART 12 Willingness to Switch to New Data Recovery Provider
Willingness level : 57.58% 14% 11% 14% Not at all likely Slightly likely 38% Moderately Likely 23% Very Likely Extremely likely
EXPLANATION 38% of the responders were very likely to switch to a new data recovery vendor.23% of the responders said they were moderately likely to switch to a new data recovery vendor. And 14% of the data recovery vendor said they are extremely likely to switch to a new data recovery vendor. Only 11% said they are not at all likely to switch to a new data recovery vendor. And 14% said they are just slightly likely to switch to a new data recovery vendor.
INFERENCE This provides an opportunity for new players in data recovery industry. About 75% of the population are willing to switch to a new data recovery vendor. With effective marketing techniques this could be converted to effective customers of data recovery services. Only 25% of the customers are fully satisfied with the current data recovery solution provider.
FINDINGS Customers are willing to switch to a new data recovery vendor
WILLINGNESS TO SWITCH TO A NEW DATA RECOVERY VENDOR: INDUSTRY SPECIFIC ANALYSIS
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CHART 13
WIllingness to switch to a new data recovery vendor : Industry specific analysis
not at all likely slighlty likely moderately likely very likely extremely likely
19
13 12 11 9 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 1
Software development Hardware sales and service manufacturing and other industry industry industries 56.41% 50.64% 58.33% Willingness level
TABLE 13
not at all slighlty moderately extremely very likely likely likely likely likely Software Development 6 7 6 11 9 industry Hardware sales and 1 5 13 12 3 service industry Manufacturing and 5 4 7 19 4 other industries
EXPLANATION 9 respondents from software development industry said that they are willing to move to a new data recovery vendor if any cases arises. 11 responded that they are very likely. When it comes to Hardware sales and service industry only 3 said that they are extremely likely to move to a new data recovery vendor. Majority but agreed that they are very likely to move to new data recovery vendor. 23 respondents agreed that they are very much likely to switch to a new data recovery vendor if any cases arise.
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INFERENCE The high per cent of respondent opting for moderately likely and very likely option from the hardware service and sales industry states that they are willing to try a new data recovery vendor but yet they are sceptical since they didn‘t opt for extremely likely option. Given the higher level of awareness about Stellar it should have been the other way. This means that the hardware sales and service industry doesn‘t consider trustful partner.
FINDINGS In the present scenario, The Hardware sales and service industry likes to get into new partnership with data recovery service providers as the number of cases are in a constant increase. Across other industries when proper awareness was given regarding data recovery they were willing to switch to a new data recovery partner rather than entrusting it with the AMC provider who may not know the importance of data stored in the device.
9) FACILITIES PROVIDED TO CUSTOMERS
Mark the facilities provided by your data recovery vendor.
CHART 14
Facilities Provided to Customers 90 80 70
60
50
40 Axis Axis Title 30 20 10 0 Confidentiality Free Consultation Free Pick Up And Drop Media Analysis
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TABLE 14
Confidentiality Free Consultation Free Pick Up And Drop Media Analysis
59 77 19 9
EXPLANATION Free consultation remains the most important additional facility offered by data recovery service providers. Over 80% of responders said they receive free consultations from their service providers. Confidentiality of data is guaranteed to less than 60% of the customers. While free pick up and drop services are offered to less than 20% of the customers.
INFERENCE Stellar might be the only company to provide all four of these additional facilities to the customer. Hence if stellar could reach to the customers highlighting these additional services which are being offered, they could easily gain popularity among the target audience.
FINDINGS Wide range of add-on services are being provided by stellar. There aren‘t many data recovery vendors that provide such wide range of additional services.
10) DISK SANITIZATION SERVICE
Have you availed any professional service to destroy confidential data? (Disk Sanitization Service) TABLE 15
Yes No 14 98
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CHART 15
Disk Sanitization Service
12%
Yes No
88%
EXPLANATION 88% of the responders said they weren‘t aware of disk sanitization services. While only 12% of the responders were aware of the disk sanitization services.
INFERENCE: This is relatively an untapped market. Responders don‘t know the importance of permanently deleting data from data storage devices. They usually format the device to erase data from devices. Only 12% of the people knew that data still exist in the device even after the device is formatted and could easily be recovered from them. Proper awareness about this factor to the general population could be an easy way to market the brand Stellar.
FINDINGS Awareness about disk sanitization is very low.
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FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS
FINDINGS:-
Based on the data acquired from the one to one interaction with people at 3rd parties‘ agency and corporate, the following are the findings of my research
Pricing of the services and software‘s provided by Stellar is much more than the local vendors. Corporates are satisfied by the high quality performance delivered by Stellar. Marketing techniques applied by Stellar Data Recovery are not adequate. Laptop and PC hard disk are the most trusted sources of data Storage. Server hard disks are gaining popularity in IT industry as reliable source of data storage. While CD-DVD Roms are no longer desired data storage device. 3rd Parties are sceptical about sending the hard disk to stellar as they find their customers unwilling to pay high price. Consumers are willing to switch to a new data recovery vendor. Wide range of add-on services are being provided by stellar. General level of awareness about data recovery and other allied services like disk sanitization are poor among the customers Brand awareness about stellar is low The important factors considered by a customer are confidentiality of data, expertise in data recovery, Experience in industry and service rates.
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SUGGESTIONS:-
Improving the efficiency of marketing department could easily transform into sales Competitive pricing with respect to local vendors could easily gain a lot of customers. Priority plans could be made flexible so that existing satisfied clients of stellar are tempted to get into priority plan. 3rd party data recovery providers could be made potential clients. Most of them don‘t have a decent lab wherein data recovery can be done. Attractive incentives and rewards could be given to 3rd parties to attract them to divert their customers to stellar data recovery. Major business for WIPE software lies with the CAs and law firms and hence special attractive packages could be designed. Aggressive marketing could be done for disk sanitization and disk degaussing services which could help Stellar to improve its brand image.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.stellarinfo.com/ http://www.stellarinfo.com/company/about/stellar-overview.htm Company Brochure Stellar data recovery Software catalogues - Stellar Data recovery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_Information_Technology_Pvt._Ltd. Knowledge shared by Mentor http://www.linkedin.com/company/stellar-information-systems-ltd http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/stellar-information-system-ltd http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/over.htm
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ANNEXURE
COVER LETTER
From Jithin J Kumar Management Trainee (Summer Intern) Stellar Information Technology Private Limited. Kochi Location. To Manager Systems/IT Department
SUBJECT:- Questionnaire For Research Purpose Sir/Madam
I am conducting a survey as a part of my summer internship in Stellar Information Private Limited on the topic “Customer awareness about Data Recovery Services and Solutions offered by Stellar Information Technology Private Limited in Kochi Location“ . Kindly cooperate by answering the survey questions.
I assure you that data collected through this survey will be used strictly for research purposes only. Thank you for considering my request.
Faithfully,
Jithin J Kumar
QUESTIONNAIRE
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QUESTIONNAIRE
Name : ______Email-id : ______Designation : ______Company : ______
1) Do you consider data essential for day to day working of your company?
Not a priority Low Priority Medium Priority High Priority Essential 2) Where do you store data of your company? Device Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always Laptop Hard disk PC Hard disk Pen Drives Server Hard disk CD/DVD ROMS Memory Cards
3) How often do you come across faulty Data storage devices (Pen drives, Hard disk)
Rarely Sometimes Often Always Device Never (Yearly 1 or 2) (Monthly 1 or 2) (Weekly 1 or 2) (Daily basis)
Laptop Hard disk PC Hard disk Pen Drives Server hard disk CD/DVD ROMS Memory Cards
4) Whom did you consult when data storage device gets damaged?
AMC provider Stellar Data Recovery
3rd Party Vendors Others
5) How aware are you about Stellar Data Recovery Solutions?
Not at all aware Slightly Aware Moderately Aware Very aware Extremely aware
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6) On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the strongest influence please rate the following factors that you take into consideration while you consult a data Recovery vendor Factors 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Expertise Confidentiality Service Rates Location Experience Customer Reviews Advertisements
7. How would you rate the performance of your current data recovery service provider?
Factors Very poor Poor Fair Good Excellent Time For Servicing Cost of Servicing Reusability of Data Confidentiality of Data OVERALL SERVICE
8. Are you willing to switch to a new data recovery solution provider ?
Not at all likely Slightly likely Moderately likely Very likely Extremely likely
9. Mark the facilities provided by your data recovery vendor? Confidentiality Free Consultation Free Pick up & Drop Media Analysis
10. Have you availed any professional service to destroy Yes No confidential data? (Disk Sanitization Service)
If yes, Name of service provider : ______
11. Do you have branches in other parts of Kerala Yes No
Thiruvananthapuram Kottayam Thrissur Palakkad Kozhikode
***** Thank you *****1 Rajagiri Business School Page 85