For the last three weeks, we covered “the problem” which is a reality gap between what business units are expecting and what IT is able to deliver in terms of IT systems’ uptime and assurance against data loss. We covered that from both a technical solutions perspective and a business perspective.
For the next two weeks, we’ll cover “what to look for in a solution” — using industry analysts’ research. Check out the video to get started:
As mentioned, in the video: Reliability & Using the Cloud top the list, but there is more to it than that.
Improving reliability (and confidence) tops the list. When I talk to enterprises, it’s the number one reason that Veeam has been invited into the meeting; because IT or senior management is not confident (or has proven bad experiences) with their existing backup solution. In the video, you will see a two-slide “sales pitch” of IDC data showing where “confidence/reliability” scored among other reasons why organizations initially chose Veeam and then later what they actually got after Veeam was in.
The cloud also ranks high on the list in a few variations, and that does give an interesting meta point. Unlike many of the IT drivers of technologies for the past decade, there isn’t a single “hero” scenario when it comes to cloud-based services and capabilities. In the past, many organizations might choose their data protection solution based on a feature or some unique capability with a key workload. Instead, when folks want to use “the cloud,” it is a misnomer because there isn’t one kind of cloud, even as it relates to data protection. Hence, you’ll see a flowchart in the video that unpacks the various clouds and their considerations for inclusion within your strategy.
It is not a coincidence that some organizations are looking to replace their legacy IT server-based services with cloud-based services as one way to improve reliability, including:
- Modernizing production workloads with SaaS that are natively durable (e.g. Office 365). Though it’s important to note that “durable” only addresses availability outages that are caused by failed components, which is mitigated by geo-replicated SaaS. That approach, while good, does not reduce your requirements for previous versions to avoid business impacts related to data loss, retention/compliance mandates, or simply the deletion or over-writing of data.
- Expanding modern infrastructure with IaaS that extends on-premises virtualization infrastructure (e.g. VMware or Hyper-V) with hypervisor-esque hosting architectures in Amazon or Azure that enables relatively seamless hybrid-deployments with VMs able to migrate between hosting platforms or locations based on the business.
- Modernizing protection capabilities with backup (BaaS) or disaster-recovery (DRaaS) of both on-premises and cloud-based production workloads, including the BaaS and/or DRaaS of IaaS VMs or SaaS offerings. (it’s okay if you have to read that acronym soup a second time)
Putting it all together, it is impossible for IT organizations that are looking ahead to not foresee cloud-based capabilities being part of their hybrid-IT strategy; likely in more than one way, giving us the term multi-cloud. But each and every cloud, used for both protection and production, will have significant ramifications on IT’s ability to deliver what the business units expect; namely, reliable and resilient assured access to the data that they rely on every day.
If you’ve missed the earlier episodes in this Tuesdays in October series, check them out below:
- Backup is not a destination
- Do you have a ‘reality gap’ in your IT strategy?
- Why downtime is not (just) an IT problem
- Why ‘cloud’ and ‘reliability’ are driving IT changes into 2020
- Which cloud should you use for data protection and why
Come back next week, as we wrap up the series with “Which cloud should you use for data protection and why.” As always, thanks for watching — and if I (or Veeam) can be of any help, please reach out to me at @JBuff.
