According to American sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, “The real problem with humanity is this: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. This could explain why some of us can't help but stock up on our possessions (new and old), despite the relative abundance of our environment. From old iPhone cases and bills to more diverse documents and files, we've all had that "I should hold on to this" feeling even though we haven't looked at what it "is" in years. The same goes for organizations and data storage. Corporate digital storage cabinets are full of sensitive data, from floating files and old images to old passwords and ex-employee details. In her best-selling book and her hit Netflix show, organization expert Marie Kondo taught the world "the magic of decluttering and changing lives" and that if you simplify and organize your home right once, you'll never have more. to do it. While we can't say the same for data, organizations can certainly move much closer to 'contactless data protection' in 2021 if they adopt a similar mindset.
An exponential challenge
One of the biggest challenges facing CIOs and CISOs is the large scale of data. After all, humans somehow manage to generate 2.5 trillion bytes of data every day, and more than half of all organizations have doubled their data online in the last two years. Without proper visibility, IT management teams can't optimize storage costs, enforce data retention policies, or quickly respond to data discovery requests. This situation, if left unchecked, will only get worse as more data is created and puts the organization at incredible risk. With millions of workers now dispatched to home offices and kitchen tables around the world, companies have had to ditch slower digital transformation plans and change their operating models almost overnight. Cloud migration and adoption of virtual collaboration solutions have accelerated rapidly to ensure the new digital workforce has access to the tools and information they need to stay productive and secure. As a result, data is produced, shared, and stored in more ways than ever before. This creates cybersecurity and compliance challenges for businesses as they navigate this new normal. Although difficult enough, inefficient approaches to data storage compound these challenges. Data sources are increasingly distributed across a variety of systems and services, such as endpoints, physical and virtual servers, SaaS applications, and AWS infrastructure. Protecting this data has traditionally required multi-vendor solutions, resulting in data backup silos, administrative complexity, and increased costs. Additionally, as organizations begin to move workloads and services to the cloud, IT teams are faced with a mix of cloud and on-premises data silos, creating gaps in data protection, data and constraints that are already overloaded with resources. That's why 2021 is the year that companies need to strike a better balance between storing data that is critical to the organization and, as Marie Kondo preaches, letting the rest go.The benefits of evolution
The competitive advantages of upgrading your organization's approach to managing data in the cloud are enormous. According to more than 700 IT managers surveyed by Druva in the US and UK, the benefits include greater ease of use and accessibility of data, greater cost savings, and the ability to drive economies of scale. Specifically, 79% of IT decision makers now see data protection and management as a major competitive advantage. 73% are more confident in data to make business decisions and 33% believe that the value of data has increased permanently since the start of the pandemic. If the message to IT managers regarding their pre-pandemic data strategies was “get started”, in 2021 the message is “we must move faster!”. Organizations must evolve to make data a pervasive part of everything from operational decision making to customer experiences. Fast uptime and analysis will be vital. If companies are successful in doing so, improving the visibility of backup data will reduce administrative complexity and allow for better data understanding. Simplified data protection with centralized policy management will also improve data governance, helping to meet legal and compliance requirements. All of this has a huge impact on the results. This type of enterprise-wide adoption of advanced cloud storage as a service (IaaS) of cloud storage infrastructure reduces both CAPEX and OPEX, while increasing scalability and flexibility. In fact, our own results indicate that it is possible to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 50% without the cost and complexity of dedicated hardware, software, and local resources.What needs to change in 2021
If companies are to successfully adopt cloud technology to clean up data storage, a few things will need to change. For example, the increased use of public and private cloud increases the usability and accessibility of data, but also requires that all members of the organization have a stronger sense of shared responsibility for data protection and security. Cloud service providers must ensure the availability of their infrastructure, but users must be careful to adhere to their part of the shared responsibility model. This requires clear company policies on data protection, as well as training and education of staff. Lastly, organizations should look at ways to adopt as-a-service models, including data protection as a service (DPaaS). Instead of trying to build in-house expertise around changing data compliance requirements, security threats, and cloud backup management, you can now partner with a team of experts who can help you protect your most important assets. valuable. If you can make progress in these key areas, in Marie Kondo's words, her organization will be that much closer to sparking joy. With the right approach, the CIOs and CISOs of 2021 will soon be able to unlock the competitive advantage of simplified data management and achieve contactless data protection.- W. Curtis Preston is the chief technical evangelist at Druva.