Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2013. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Tracy Staniland, vice president of corporate marketing, Asigra
2013: Backup Becomes an Attribute of Computing
Data is being stored on
more devices, applications and platforms than ever before. Organizations tasked
with protecting this data have relied on a cocktail of backup applications to
protect mobile devices, cloud application data, virtual environments, on-premise
block and file data and more. But the explosion of data, driven in part by the consumerization
of IT and social media has increased the complexity of protecting this
information by an order of magnitude. The situation is only getting worse as
data volumes continue to grow and compliance requirements continue to rise. According to Gartner, today's geographically
dispersed and increasingly mobile workforce expects to access content from
anywhere, at any time, in the context of a business process.
To address this trend,
IT professionals seek the consolidation and optimization of IT operations. Part
of this process includes the consolidation of redundant IT operations such as
backup. With the number of operating systems such as Windows, Mac, Linux and
VMware combined with the variety of backup targets that include laptops, mobile
devices, servers and storage, as well as cloud based applications and
platforms, an enterprise will typically have at least three separate backup
solutions under their management. Consolidating backup operations under one
control hub can easily bring back several man hours per day. With the demand
for a more consolidated backup infrastructure, it is anticipated that the
following five predictions will materialize in 2013:
- Backup
will continue its evolution and increasingly become an attribute of computing,
allowing business application managers to auto-recover data that is lost due to
human error, system failures or natural disasters. As part of this trend,
disparate applications will require a unifying backup infrastructure that
centralizes the backup vault and provides for both local and remote recovery.
- Cloud and mobile apps will join on-premise applications in
receiving enterprise-class data recovery priority as more business information
is generated and stored in these applications. Servers and storage repositories
holding volumes of high-value data will be incorporated into the backup
infrastructure of organizations. Storage volumes will also be impacted by Big
Data, which Gartner predicts will drive $ 34
Billion of IT spending in 2013.
Enhancements in the way this information is optimized and stored in order to
reduce storage requirements will continue.
- Because
of the significant gains in efficiency, data accessibility, affordability and
the ability to provide end-to-end data recoverability, cloud backup will
continue to take marketshare from on-premise backup applications, especially
tape-based solutions.
- Users
will have more options than ever before when it comes to aligning backup costs
with business requirements for data availability. More enterprises will turn to
solutions that allow IT professionals to prioritize and assign mission critical
data for near-instant recoverability while retaining, yet de-prioritizing, less
critical data on recovery platforms that are matched to recover data based on
its business value.
As
business data becomes more mobile, requiring organizations to respond in a way
that protects the integrity and ability to recover this data when needed,
developers are working on the next generation of backup technologies that will
simplify what is becoming an enormously complex and distributed IT environment
for many companies. According to Gartner, by 2015 more than 60% of enterprises will
have suffered material loss of sensitive corporate data via mobile devices. Without flexible
backup solutions that have elastic qualities, allowing them to adapt, expand
and contract as businesses grow or retract under these conditions,
organizations are at risk of losing precious data assets. Fortunately,
innovators in the backup space remain on the front lines of this dynamic area
of IT and those with foresight are moving to make backup an attribute of the
evolving computing landscape.
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About
the Author
Tracy Staniland is the vice president of
corporate marketing for Asigra, a cloud computing software vendor focused on
backup and recovery that transforms the way businesses manage and protect their
data.