Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2017.  Read them in this 9th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Krishna Subramanian, COO of Komprise

2017: Hybrid Cloud Data Management Gains Prominence

As IT belt-tightening continues, businesses are no longer just dabbling in the cloud for new applications and uses.  Instead, they are seriously implementing hybrid cloud strategies with data moving mostly out of on premise to the cloud now, but with an eye to hybrid access in the future.  The cloud is becoming a core element of a hybrid IT infrastructure - and for data, this has several implications on how data is moved, how it can be accessed in the cloud, and what contingency/DR plans are needed.

In 2017, we expect enterprises to focus on the following key hybrid cloud priorities when managing data:

• Insight into all the costs - including data retrieval. Storing data in the cloud is cheap, but if you do a lot of data retrievals back, it can get expensive very fast. Businesses using systems that blindly auto-tier cold blocks to the cloud are often shocked at their data retrieval costs. This is because these solutions are not analytics driven and will simply recall blocks as needed without any eye towards costs. Businesses will instead opt for intelligent data management automation that is analytics driven and optimizes what moves to the cloud along with monitors and thresholds on what gets retrieved back.
  

• The cloud is not just a cheap tier, so don't trap it in a 1980s filesystem. A big reason enterprises are interested in the cloud is the agility it provides in being able to spin up compute as needed on-demand for new uses like big-data analytics. So, data moved to the cloud needs to be natively accessible in the cloud without requiring a traditional filesystem. But most storage systems treat the cloud as a cheap tier and bury its access within their filesystem. Businesses will not be satisfied with the cloud as just a cheap storage bucket and instead demand solutions that move data to the cloud while preserving both traditional file and native cloud/object access.

• On premise/second cloud becomes a DR/contingency plan. We first saw the cloud being used as a DR site. But with more data living in the cloud, we are seeing many businesses look at on premise locations as DR sites to the cloud. Or, in some cases, businesses are looking at putting data at more than one cloud as a DR strategy. Businesses will look for cost-efficient solutions that replicate data across clouds and provide cross-cloud data management as a key part of the DR strategy.
  

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About the Author

Krishna Subramanian is COO of Komprise, the industry's only intelligent data management software used by leading businesses to manage with insight across storage and cut 70%+ of costs. Twitter: @cloudKrishna