Data
Loss is arguably the single biggest fear encountered by IT today. No
matter what the causes are, a data loss event results in serious
repercussions for the organization. The impact of downtime, both on IT
as well as on business, is immediate and overarching. 64 percent IT
pros consider a data loss event as a life or death situation for their
business, according to an IDC study conducted in the past.
Many
a times, we have seen organizations investing in the wrong technology
or solution, in a desperate attempt to ensure zero-downtime and an always-on infrastructure. Worse is the fact that many customers have
not upgraded their Backup strategy and technology over the years,
despite technologies related to storage, security, management having
scaled multiple new refreshes.
To
add to their woes, today's digitization initiatives and increasing
number of cyber incidents throw very difficult data challenges at the IT
department. The result: data protection sprawl, increased cost, and
lesser recovery confidence!
The
good news is, IT folks today do realize the need to overhaul the legacy
approach to backup and recovery. Backup modernization is an inevitable
path they need to go down, to achieve better service levels, improved
data recovery and real-time data protection. Their success however will
depend largely on how they choose the right technology and the right
partner.
Ending the Endpoint Backup Woes
Studies
indicate that as much as 40 percent of an organization's data is stored
uniquely on endpoints, mainly the laptops and mobile devices.
This
means that close to half of an organization's data sits outside the
data centres, roaming freely in coffee shops, airports, and other public
spaces. Ever wondered how many of your customer organizations include
these endpoints in their data protection strategy? Not many, I bet!
Let
me tell you why. The conventional endpoint backup strategy required
that individual users manually backup their data to the data center.
Historically, people never ever backup their data. Besides, these
devices are always on the move, don't always have full network
connectivity to facilitate backup.
Endpoint
data protection is thus probably the trickiest area for a CIO. But, are
they ready to risk that 40 percent data? Definitely not. And thats
where a partner can add great value, by helping customers to include
various endpoints in their data retention policy.
Today
we have helped partners deploy solutions that offer greater control to
IT, without causing inconvenience to the end users. If bandwidth or
complexity or scalability is a concern for your customers, there are
innovative solutions to fit diverse requirements. The customer will also
have the choice to decide whether or not to send data to the cloud.
A
recent study by one of our technology partners, Carbonite, points to
some interesting facts about how much the IT pros value data. The study
revealed a list of things that IT pros will willingly give up, rather
than encountering a data loss. And the list actually includes things
like internet connection, cell service, wedding ring and even their
internal organs! Joking aside, the threat of downtime is the biggest
driver for todays business continuity purchase decisions.
Many
of our partners in India have already taken this drift quite seriously
and are proactively addressing some of their customer's data recovery
concerns. Some of the most data-savvy organizations have in fact
redefined their recovery metrics completely, specifically the recovery
time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) for faster than
normal recoveries and minimal data loss.
Today's data recovery and backup solutions we carry have been able to leverage this need in the market and monetize the same.
So,
go ahead and challenge a CIO! Ask them how much downtime can be endured
before they recover the data. And, what would be the cost to the
business when the backup data is hours old! The fact is, today's
desirable RPO is zero, and RTO is less than one minute! And companies
can achieve these new standards at a much lesser cost as compared to
their legacy recovery solutions.
The
promise of better SLAs instantly opens up newer opportunities for
solution partners. All you need is a compelling portfolio of backup
modernization solutions and technologies.