Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
SaaS, Ransomware, and Dark Data
By Ranga Rajagopalan, Vice President of Product at Commvault
It has been a busy year for IT professionals as
well as for
Commvault. The COVID-19
pandemic has forced many to accelerate their cloud adoption and other digital
transformation initiatives, making it more important than ever for them to
intelligently manage, move and protect business critical data. This growing
need for intelligent data management has increased demand for Commvault's data
protection solutions, as professionals seek innovative ways to simplify the management
of their organization's data, whether it resides on-premises, on multiple
clouds, or on the laptops that they and other people at their organization are
using to work from home.
As you find yourself wondering what 2021 might
hold for you as you are likely working from home this holiday season, here are
some of the data management challenges, opportunities, and other market
developments that Commvault's Ranga Rajagopalan, VP of Products, predicts you
and other IT professionals might face in 2021.
More Companies Will Seek to Shine a Light on
Their Dark Data
-
For years
companies have been building up vast amounts of "Dark Data" - data backed up or
archived for retention or compliance purposes that otherwise sits silent,
unused, and sometimes completely forgotten. However, as markets get more
crowded and companies find themselves needing to further differentiate
themselves from their competition, more companies in 2020 will seek to shine a
light on this Dark Data for insights that can improve business outcomes.
Whether they are simply indexing this data or running analytics or AI tools on
it, companies will try to use Dark Data to generate insights - ranging from as
how to lower their operating costs by optimizing the storage of this Dark Data,
to how to develop more compelling digital services for their customers -- that
offer them a competitive advantage.
Organizations Finally Realize They Need A
Business Continuity Plan for Ransomware Attacks
-
As recent ransomware attacks on hospitals that
halted radiation treatments for some cancer patients demonstrate, despite organizations' best
efforts, it is impossible for security solutions to be 100 percent effective.
As organizations finally come around to realizing that no security system is
perfect, they are now asking themselves not what they will do if a
ransomware or other cyberattack locks or destroys their data, but when.
The answer to this question is to have a business continuity plan in place that
accounts for a ransomware or other cyberattack, allowing the organization to
recover from the attack quickly, so that any disruption to their operations is
minimal. Next year, expect to see organizations finally start working to ensure
they have in place the business continuity processes and disaster recovery
solutions they need to rapidly recover not just from natural disasters, but
malicious cyberattack disasters as well - helping them transform ransomware
attacks from three-car pileups into mere bumps in the road.
It Is a SaaS World -- We Are Just Living In It
-
While C-Suite
executives increasingly see their organization's digital services as essential
to their organization's success, most of them now also see purchasing and
managing on-premises IT infrastructure and applications as non-revenue
generating activities outside of their core competency. As a result, these days
whether you are a CIO at a global financial firm, IT leader at a mid-size
company, or just managing IT for a small business, chances are that you have or
are trying to find a SaaS solution for Human Resources, Enterprise Resource
Planning or other business applications that are not critical differentiators
for your company. Expect to see strong growth continue for SaaS solutions - including
data management - that can address
general business needs, and free the solution's customers to focus on the
digital services core to their business. 2021 will demonstrate once and for all
that it is a SaaS world, and we are all just living in it.
##
About the Author
Ranga manages end-to-end software
design services for Commvault's suite of data management and data protection
solutions, including Commvault Complete Backup and Recovery,
Commvault HyperScale, Commvault Orchestrate and Commvault Activate. He has
deep experience leading product management and engineering teams across the
entire lifecycle of data protection and disaster recovery products. He has been
leading the product teams through Commvault's ongoing transformation to hybrid
cloud solutions, and is collaborating across Commvault to shape the future of
its product strategy. Prior to joining Commvault, Ranga held multiple
positions at Dell EMC, including managing business strategy, planning
and operations for Dell EMC's Data Protection Division. He also led
product management for Dell EMC's data protection appliances, including Data
Domain and IDPA. Before Dell EMC, he worked at organizations including Veritas
and HP.