The shutdown of cloud backup provider Nirvanix does not surprise me as it appeared to me to be somewhat ill conceived. While Backup Exec is good for conventional backup to tape and other media, is not so well suited for cloud backup and fast RTO (Recovery Time Objectives). It just doesn’t meet the needs of disaster recovery and business continuity. Other solutions like DRworx are vastly better.
Alvaka Networks Kevin McDonald is quoted in the story as well.
Here is the full story:
Backup Exec.cloud customers hunt for data protection alternatives
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied. 
Estimating an average time for patching servers and PCs can be a bit tricky. It can vary from one month to the next, depending upon the number and complexity of the patches released by your software vendors. You must consider all versions of operating systems and have a complete inventory of all your application software to do this job correctly. Our experience has shown that manual patching of systems takes on average of about 1.5 hours each.
This is a basic cost calculator for you to compute your typical monthly cost for patching your servers, PCs, laptops, tablets and associated application software. It also forms the basis for you to begin calculating your Return on Investment for software patching, or for comparison with alternatives to the manual process of patching operating systems and application software—such as Patch Management as a Service, also known as Vulnerability Management as a Service.