Like any solution in a data center, legacy backup and recovery vendors eventually wear out their welcome and struggle to evolve with the growing needs of their customer’s business. The process of evaluating new vendors takes time and energy, and there are a myriad of challenges associated with procuring new solutions.
As we start to see the market in enterprise IT transition towards more SaaS during the cloud computing explosion, practices as fundamental to data protection as production backup and recovery are trending in the same direction.
A few familiar scenarios when IT organizations go to evaluate backup vendors in a traditional model of acquiring new solutions:
- You finally found the backup solution that will meet the business need after hours of reading through marketing fluff and feature functionality. You have learned the new product and all of its nuances and you’re ready to make the change. Then your existing legacy vendor tells you they are ready to drop the price and PROMISE new functionality on the next release of their product to fix your pain (and then it never shows up), locking you into a 3-year contract with the same problems.
- You get to the point where you found the solution that meets the business need, and now you’re ready to test it. The vendor has promised unbelievable performance for the most daunting enterprise workloads, and has run you through the demos and white boarded out the architecture. Then you go to deploy for the test,(deep breath) and the product falls flat on its’ face… back to the drawing board.
- You actually find the solution that meets the business need at the right price, you test the product…it works. A new appliance with a flashy logo. You feel confident that you have bought the next generation backup and recovery appliance. You write the check, and in a few weeks you get the shiny new box in the mail to plug-in and play… 6 months go by and everything is working fine, until you see a new solution emerge in the market that does everything your box does and a whole lot more for a fraction of the cost. Having already made the investment, there is no way to backpedal without starting the evaluation all over again.
Moving backups to the cloud is a common step towards building a Hybrid Cloud model and trimming the fat in the data center. Now IT organizations have the option to search and scroll through a Marketplace like GCP and evaluate cloud back up vendors in a very consumable fashion. Vendors are responding by creating new services that are easier to deploy, consume and upgrade.
Some of the biggest advantages to the public cloud and associated ‘as-a-service’ offerings is the flexibility the IT organization gains from elasticity and availability. Use what you want, when you want it, wherever you are. Tear it down when you’re done.
Those resistant to public cloud argue the advantages of the cloud come at a hefty price tag; the flip side to this is a reduction in expensive technology refreshes that put a strain on the budget. Predictable month to month billing gives the budget holders peace of mind as they look to manage the bigger projects that require months and sometimes years of planning in advance.
Most importantly, simplicity and ease of use shouldn’t compromise performance. Enterprises today are looking for these kind of features:
- Incremental forever application aware backup for cloud VMs and databases
- Near instant recovery for their most challenging mission-critical workloads
- Ability to leverage scalable object storage for more than just long-term vaulting
- Ability to USE backup data for accelerating application development and analytics as part of a CI/CD pipeline
Check out the Google Cloud MarketPlace for enterprise grade backup and recovery SaaS offerings like Actifio.