Businesses today are using data as a leverage point to increase revenue and profits. Improvements in data analytics now allows companies to bring innovative products and services to current and new markets, improve operations or simply making better decisions based on better information. This data is literally the heartbeat of businesses today and companies go to great lengths (and expenses) to protect that data from loss and or corruption.
Historically companies have adopted a calculated and universal solution to data protection. But with the tremendous growth of data, the ability to protect that data and ensure a clean recovery for access to that data in the event of a loss has become more and more questionable.
Businesses are facing a wide variety of issues by not modernizing their Backup and DR strategies. Here are seven of the issues they face:
- Slow Cloud Adoption – Cloud can be a real game changer when it comes to data protection and long-term retention. Yet, companies are trapped in traditional backup infrastructures that were never desired to embrace the cloud. As a result cloud usage is often limited and relied upon only as a traditional storage target which significantly reduces its value.
- Long Backup Windows – The traditional model of full and incremental backups becomes unmanageable as data sizes grow and full backup windows extend beyond SLA requirements. To make matters worse, these lengthy backup windows can impact application performance as well.
- Slow Recoveries – While backup windows are important, it is recovery that really matters. After all, if you cannot recover your backups then why have them in the first place? To make matters worse, lengthy recovery windows can materially impact business operations, customer experience and typically revenue. Users need to find new ways to accelerate recovery of even the largest files to minimize impact when outages occur
- Disaster Recovery Challenges – Data is even more critical than ever to today’s businesses and so users have to plan for both local backup and recovery and disaster recovery. Traditional backup and recovery methodologies create significant DR challenges due to restoration complexity and windows. As a result, many companies limit their focus on DR and if they do focus on it, tests are run infrequently. This leads to unreliable DR plans and processes and a significant risk that business will not be able to recover from a DR event if one were to occur.
- Multiple RPOs – Different applications mandate different recovery point objectives which typically results in multiple different protection tools. As a result, users struggle with many point solutions adding in cost in management and reduction in reliability.
- Very Large Database Protection – All of the challenges of backup and recovery are amplified with very large databases. These data sets are typically critical for business operations and so the impact of lengthy backup windows and painfully slow recoveries can be significant to business operations.
- Tape Trouble – Low confidence in tape backup for long term data retention and data access.
There are constant concerns about the lack of access to and loss of data. Businesses spend billions each year on traditional solutions that, when tested, often fail to meet minimum point and time recovery standards. Enterprises today are at point where emerging technologies are helping provide options to modernize their data protection strategy. With so many data protection issues facing businesses using legacy systems, it’s time for business and IT leaders to make smart strategic decisions to upgrade their data protection strategy…the decision that will protect the lifeblood of their business.
Check out Actifio GO if you’re interested in SAAS backup to cloud.
Free Checklist: 9 Must Haves for Cloud Backup and Recovery