Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Adrian Knapp, founder and chairman of Aparavi
Data Management Isn't Ready for 2020, and Neither Are You
This year as I ponder the future of data management in 2020 I
find myself a bit more apprehensive about what's to come. The challenges seem more
challenging, and the risks riskier, especially for enterprises and government
organizations with either limited resources or constrained budgets, which
usually seems to be everyone. With that in mind, I'd like to highlight some
topics that are particularly critical as we enter the new year.
1. CCPA is here, and California's
not ready
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) goes into effect
January 1, and many businesses aren't even sure if it applies to them. This is a
fairly broad data privacy regulation and while it was intended to rein in the
Facebooks and Googles of the world, there are cases in which other companies
should, or must, be able to show CCPA compliance. CCPA applies to data
collected in the past 12 months, so most are already a year behind schedule.
2. If you're outside
California, you're not ready either
Even if you aren't in California and don't sell to or deal
with anyone in California, other states have passed or are kicking around
similar laws. A federal law is likely not far away. Whether it's to address
consumer privacy, data breaches, or greater transparency, the regulatory
landscape will keep evolving, and organizations need a strategy to accommodate
the sweeping changes that may be required imminently.
3. We're not ready
for ransomware
Ransomware attacks are reaching staggering numbers and small
to midsized operations are the most vulnerable because they are the least able
to afford to protect data properly. Public-sector IT departments that support
services like municipal utilities or emergency response should be particularly
terrified about cyberattacks choking their systems. Traditional backups are
simply no good in these scenarios, and that's something most of us aren't
talking about enough.
4. We're not ready
for data governance
Unfortunately given global political uncertainties, I expect
to hear more about the need to manage data related to International Traffic in
Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS). Businesses
and government/education users will also be more challenged to respond to and
process legal eDiscovery requests, public records requests, subject access requests,
and deletion requests. Unmanaged data causes a pervasive chaos, and data
governance and classification is a tedious manual process that needs far more
embedded, automated processes.
5. We're not ready
for Amazon's monopoly on data
As long as I'm sharing my deepest darkest fears, I would be
remiss if I didn't include my fears about Amazon and AWS' ubiquity. AWS users, roughly
half the market, need to be very vigilant. I am not concerned about outages or
breaches - they have the infrastructure to weather a literal or metaphorical
storm - I am concerned about the company's ability to dominate business data.
Its unique position in the industry has allowed it to strong-arm other vendors,
stifle partners, and shun collaboration. But integration and cooperation give
customers freedom to manage their data on any cloud as they see fit, and to
advocate for anything else strikes me as un-American.
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About the Author
Adrian Knapp is founder and
chairman of Aparavi, a Gartner Cool Vendor in the multi-cloud data management
space. He has more than 15
years of experience in data management technologies, beginning in Europe and
more recently with U.S. companies. Prior to founding Aparavi, he spent 11 years
as head of international data protection software company NovaStor. For more
information visit http://www.aparavi.com.