In today’s increasingly digital world, data has become the lifeblood of the enterprise. It’s critical to the future of any organisation and its volume continues to grow, with IDC predicting that the world will be creating 163 zettabytes of data a year by 2025.
Unsurprisingly, this growth coincides with the demand for storage increasing by more than 50% annually in recent years.
So how are enterprises managing their changing data?
The idea of ‘storage’ is becoming obsolete in this new cloud era
Despite the growth in data volumes, for many years there was a drought of innovation when it came to how data was protected, stored and managed. With the rapid adoption of virtualisation and a surge in big data, enterprises struggled to access, retrieve and recover all of their data using legacy systems. The traditional definition of ‘storage’ no longer matched the needs of today’s enterprises. Then, along came cloud… Opening up a world of possibilities!
The cloud has redefined ‘storage’, moving it beyond the legacy capabilities of a clunky digital version of a filing cabinet. Cloud data management has transformed the backup, storage and recovery market into a value creating function. All data is securely managed and orchestrated across private and public clouds while delivering backup, archival, compliance, search, analytics and copy data management in a single, scalable, run anywhere platform.
In a nutshell, back-up ‘storage’ is no longer just storage. Whereas legacy systems were similar to a vault, with everything of value secured and locked away inside, now everything in the vault has a productive purpose and is copied somewhere else, making it instantly accessible and recoverable should something like ransomware break the lock.
The protected data is also useful, especially in conjunction with machine learning: whether it’s making future business decisions or simply identifying gaps, data analytics can help inform every level of your organisation.
Data breach threats such as ransomware are on the increase
With data growing at a phenomenal rate in enterprises around the world, it is under attack more than ever. At any given moment access to data can be compromised through things like system failure, power outages or – even worse – cybercrime such as ransomware.
Nowadays, the ransomware threat is hard to avoid. Its growth can be attributed to the ever-increasing volume of valuable data being stored digitally. Businesses in every sector are being affected in what is quickly becoming an epidemic. The WannaCry cyber attack on the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) in 2017 also proved that the criminals behind ransomware do not discriminate- everyone is a potential target and it’s a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.
Given the current cyber crime landscape, it’s no longer enough to try to prevent attacks – enterprises need to be one step ahead with validated systems that can be quickly and easily restored so you can avoid paying the ransom and have the ability to return to ‘business as usual’ in record time.
Data protection is no longer an insurance policy, it’s critical. Having an effective solution in place can be the difference between ransomware being a costly, time-consuming disaster for your business or a minor inconvenience.
The new EU GDPR is on its way
For organisations that are either based in the EU or trade with EU member countries, the phrase on everyone’s lips is GDPR.
The new regulation sets in place stringent data protection and privacy regulations that require companies to reshape their entire data management process.
When it comes into force in May 2018, it will require a substantial mindset change for many organisations. Data management systems will again no longer be used for merely ‘storing’ data, but will need to assist businesses in hitting key GDPR requirements, including protecting people’s right to be forgotten. To ensure compliance, companies should adopt a centralised data management solution that provides simplicity, security, and policy-driven management.
Enterprises increasingly use multi-cloud environments
Nowadays enterprises are using a multi-cloud approach – different clouds for different purposes, whether it’s public, private or a mixture of both.
By blending public and private clouds within their business strategy, organisations are gaining increased flexibility and scalability. Having more than one cloud provider can decrease deployment times and increase cost effectiveness.
But in order to take full advantage of this hybrid environment, organisations need a cloud data management solution that will support and automate the movement of data across all cloud ecosystems.
