Data protection in multi-cloud environments
By WP BrandStudio
Cloud trends, evolution and sprawl yield a changing landscape for security. A unified protection architecture can help.
Hybrid cloud environments are quickly becoming the new normal across organizations. Because of its unmatched scalability, public cloud is gaining popularity for new applications. In fact, it’s not uncommon for users of public cloud to use more than three cloud service providers (CSPs) simultaneously. For security and regulatory compliance, many organizations choose to also maintain their-on premises infrastructure. But navigating between the two environments can be challenging.
In other words: Multi-cloud is here, but it’s making life more complex. Particularly when it comes to data protection.
Many data-related processes—such as backup, recovery- and recovery-point and time objectives (RPOs and RTOs)—need to adapt to this evolving hybrid and multi-cloud world. 89 percent of IT professionals feel that continuous data protection is critical to hybrid cloud success, and 87% feel the same about data security and the ability to protect data regardless of location. This means that the solution they deploy must offer the type of agility and functionality that spans multiple locations, and topologies that can follow the workloads. So many organizations are investing in both disaster recovery-as-a-service and cloud backup targets. Simply put, as IaaS usage increases, so does an organization’s propensity to use different protection solutions.
Data protection implementations must unify service levels across on-premises and public cloud. This consistency sets the tone for success in hybrid cloud environments, and influences business, financial, and technical success beyond just data protection. Improving and optimizing data protection technologies is a key step in setting an organization up for success overall. When data protection needs are met—and also seamlessly and fully integrated across environments—it not only makes IT a hero but also frees up critical time that can be spent elsewhere, like running the business and driving new initiatives.
“Optimized” data protection
Data protection has evolved through the years and seen many innovations and technology iterations. “Optimized” data protection, however, offers the ability to perform backup and advanced, feature-rich recovery of data on-premises and in the cloud, including SaaS. This includes the ability to optimize storage consumption with deduplication and protect physical and virtual environments as well as applications running on container infrastructure.
Optimized data protection solutions are designed to be easy to use while offering advanced management and reporting capabilities. They can also be run as services— evolving to become not just protection, but intelligent data management.
Successful cloud strategies, in part, can be defined as having strong hybrid cloud capabilities: The ability to choose between public cloud and private cloud technologies according to workload and business needs, not arbitrary outside factors.
The benefits of optimized data protection
IT must deliver services more quickly in a cloud-centric world, but also
IT must deliver services more quickly in a cloud-centric world, but also economically. Optimized data protection technologies help IT organizations achieve those goals. By confidently protecting data wherever it resides, organizations can roll out new cloud services (whether on- or off-premises) quickly, knowing that the protection mechanisms behind those services have them covered. And productivity sees a boost as a result—those with optimized data protection environments report completing 57% more of their cloud projects ahead of schedule.
A big part of any cloud project’s cost is manpower. The time of developers, IT architects, security architects, and data protection specialists is expensive, so getting projects done faster also means getting them done more cost effectively. ESG, an IT analyst, research and strategy firm based in Massachusetts, asked respondents what percentage of cloud projects are completed under, on, and over budget. Those with optimized data protection environments reported completing 59% more of their cloud projects under budget.
Investments to optimize data protection appear to pay off in reduced future-facing on-premises infrastructure spending. If you have a solid, optimized data protection environment, you do not have to throw money at updating or upgrading it. The environment is also less time-consuming to manage. That is all part of why ESG sees organizations with optimized data protection having to allocate 6% less of their budget to on-premises infrastructure.
In addition, previous success in achieving hybrid cloud goals with optimized data protection translates to an overall higher level of confidence in a business’s ability to accomplish future hybrid cloud goals. Three-fifths of organizations with optimized data protection environments are very confident in their ability to support hybrid cloud goals over the next three years—2.3 times the frequency of legacy data protection shops. Also, IT organizations at modern data protection shops are 48% more likely than their legacy counterparts to be viewed as competitive differentiators by the c-suite.
How Dell Technologies can help
Together, Dell Technologies, VMware and Intel Corporation are driving innovation and next-generation capabilities with the broadest portfolio of trusted infrastructure, cloud, and data protection solutions. This comprehensive portfolio of hardware, software, and services enables organizations to easily adopt transformative technologies to maximize performance, compete, and thrive in the new digital economy.
Dell EMC Data Protection solutions for hybrid and multi-cloud help customers transform their data centers to enable greater operational efficiency, resiliency, and scalability throughout the entire cloud infrastructure.
Additionally, Dell Technologies on Demand delivers the industry’s broadest end-to-end portfolio of consumption-based and data center as-a-service solutions ideally suited for the way on-premises infrastructure and services are consumed in the on-demand economy.
To learn more about Dell EMC Data Protection Solutions for Cloud, start here.
This content is paid for by an advertiser and published by WP BrandStudio. The Washington Post newsroom was not involved in the creation of this content. Learn more about WP BrandStudio.
