Your backup TCO is way higher than the number on your invoice. This episode breaks down where your backup budget actually goes—and why labor costs might be your biggest expense.

When backup admins talk about costs, they usually mean software, hardware, and maybe cloud storage. Those are real expenses—sometimes six or seven figures. But here's what most people miss: those are the smaller costs in your backup TCO calculation.

The bigger cost? It's the humans. It's the hours your team spends configuring systems, chasing down failed backups, managing retention policies, and trying to keep ransomware attackers from blowing up your infrastructure. A study from Unitrends found that more than half of backup environments require over 10 hours of management per week. At typical IT salary rates, that adds up to serious money over the life of a system.
In this conversation, Prasanna and I get into the weeds on backup TCO. We talk about:

- Why "soft costs" are actually the hardest costs to ignore
- The cloud storage trap—especially when you're using object lock and forever incrementals
- How retention policies (or lack thereof) can blow up your budget
- The automation strategies that can actually reduce your labor burden
- Why SaaS-based backup might lower your TCO and improve your security posture
- The 1993 disaster that made me Mr. Backup (spoiler: we had zero usable backups of a production Oracle database)

If you're a backup admin trying to justify budget, or if you're evaluating new backup solutions, this episode will give you a framework for thinking about what you're really paying. Don't make the mistake of only looking at invoice costs—the human element is where the real money goes.
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CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Intro and Prasanna's TCO PTSD
3:00 - The three "small" costs: software, hardware, cloud
5:30 - Cloud storage costs and object lock pitfalls
8:00 - The 1993 disaster story
11:00 - Why labor is your biggest backup expense
15:00 - Automation strategies to reduce costs
20:00 - Should you consider SaaS backup?
25:00 - Wrap-up and key takeaways
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