The result is that a large number of organisations have now adopted a hybrid model, with data spread between on premises and cloud-based solutions. However, many businesses have not addressed their information management requirements accordingly. The need to ensure that data backup and recovery solutions support a cloud and hybrid environment is becoming increasingly critical to business continuity and sustainability today.
As a result of the push to the cloud, information has become increasingly fragmented across a variety of storage platforms, multiple locations and different clouds. This adds significantly to the complexity of information management. However, in order to harness the power of enterprise data, organisations must have access to their information when they need it, regardless of its location. In addition, it is essential to effectively manage data in order to derive insight that can be used to inform decision making at a strategic level. Information availability and information insight are key areas for information management strategy, and in today's data-driven world, this needs to support a hybrid cloud environment if it is to be successful.
Key to the availability of information is an organisation's backup and recovery strategy and solution. Without the ability to recover data in the event of loss, organisations can be left without the ability to do business, both in the short- and the long-term. It is, therefore, essential in an increasingly cloud-based environment to ensure the effectiveness of backup and recovery operations that utilise cloud storage services.
In order to cater effectively to these storage alternatives, backup and recovery solutions need to be able to easily incorporate cloud storage into the backup strategy without compromising on performance. In addition, interoperability is a key requirement, due to the multi-vendor, multi-sourcing approach of the majority of cloud environments. Self-service capabilities are also an important requirement, as this will enable both IT and non-IT users to independently manage and control backup and recovery activities. Usability should also be assured through intuitive interfaces combined with native tools to ensure maximum adoption with minimal need for training.
One of the most important criteria for a backup solution is the ability to incorporate hybrid and cloud environments without negatively affecting performance times. It is essential therefore to look for a solution that takes advantage of multi-streaming and other techniques to fully utilise network bandwidth. This in turn will significantly reduce backup and recovery times in a cloud environment. In addition, organisations should look for a solution that is able to effectively replicate backup data to cloud storage while still maintaining adequate levels of de-duplication to optimise capacity requirements.
In order to address the cost and complexity typically associated with hybrid physical and virtual environments, a converged platform is required to simplify infrastructure management, along with automated processes and controls. Flexibility, scalability and appropriate controls are other essential elements for an effective information management, backup and recovery solution.
The volume of data and its scope within the enterprise will only continue to increase, and cloud-based services are a growing trend. Businesses need to ensure they adopt tools that can adequately protect their data against loss no matter where it is located across both physical and virtual data stacks. Backup solutions need to ensure faster, simpler data recovery, enhanced performance and efficient storage in order to deliver adequate data protection. This empowers businesses to leverage the advantages of the cloud, while maintaining their data integrity and ability to recover from data loss events.
