In the heat of jumping on DX, do not lose sight of data protection and intelligence, says this cloud backup expert.
With cyberattacks on the rise at an accelerated pace, where should organizations begin to protect data at the core of their digital transformation (DX) journey?
Are businesses treating cloud data management as simply backup and recovery rather than as a part of their DX journey?
Veeam’s 2020 Data Protection Trends report has found that 95% of organizations worldwide suffer unexpected outages with each outage lasting around 117 minutes on average. That is almost two hours of productive work lost. One way to look at the situation is that “prevention is always better than cure”.
It is always advantageous for a business to be well-prepared for an outage or cyberattack as it could happen anywhere, anytime and to anyone. Fortunately, there are solutions that businesses can deploy to prepare for an ultra-resilient backup storage system that includes tapes and removable drives.
DX and DP go together
Having good and reliable data backup goes beyond just backing up and restoring data, but also to expand business capabilities, which is why it should be at the core of the DX journey.
Veeam’s studies have shown that 43% of organizations in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region still relied on outdated legacy systems to protect their data, without fully considering the negative impact this can have on their business.
Migrating legacy applications to the cloud can be a complex and tricky process, but it is an essential. Most of the time, legacy applications are not supported by modern visualization software and data protection tools. For a truly-modernized data protection plan to be practical, a company will need a comprehensive solution that supports cloud, virtual and physical data management for any application, and any data across any cloud platforms.
With 41% of organizations in APJ agreeing that cyber threats will be a big hurdle in the next 12 months, it will be an uphill battle for any organization’s DX journey to be successful. The challenges faced by organizations include the lack of staff or budgets to work on new initiatives, as well as the lack of visibility on operational performance.
Maximizing the potential of data
In today’s data-centric world, data sprawl is everywhere, which makes it increasingly more important for organizations to remain vigilant in order to control and protect their data.
Beyond just backing up their data, 42% of organizations globally stored production data for at least a few years, for long-term retention. Organizations have to then understand the value of reusing this data for other purposes than disaster recovery. Other functions of this data may include data intelligence gathering, as well as supporting future software development.
Modern-day data protection tools aim to provide a simple, yet flexible and reliable solution that saves costs and resources. Traditionally, data protection is perceived to be tied to on-premises and physically-dedicated environments for security reasons. This is no longer the case anymore, as businesses demand more-flexible licensing options to easily move to a more hybrid or multi-cloud environment.
To sum up, data protection is a key issue that organizations must manage during their DX journeys. With cyber threats and unexpected internet outages expected to increase, the potential loss in revenue and reputation can be extremely detrimental to businesses big or small.
In the modern digital landscape, businesses also need to innovate and maximize the potential of the data that they have gathered and stored, as it could tremendously help to expand their business capabilities, especially amidst the current COVID-19 situation.
