Application development and delivery modernization, stricter IT service level agreements (SLAs) that come with increasing pressure from the business, and massive data growth have a ripple effect across the IT infrastructure market. For the storage market, these requirements mean that vendor marketing collateral is rife with words like “agility,” “availability,” and “disruption” – and for good reason. Data-driven insights fuel today’s economy, and businesses are seeking to maximize returns on the information that they are storing, managing and protecting. In short, ensuring that data is available, and rapidly accessible, is a fundamental business priority.
Against this backdrop, the data protection paradigm that the storage industry has known for decades indeed needs to transform. Legacy data protection architectures are not equipped to handle the demanding SLAs created by the exponential rise in data criticality, volume and variety.
Consumption-based data protection offers IT the ability to pay for data protection services that are tailored to specific application requirements, nearly on demand. Effectively, this approach creates the opportunity for IT to shed expensive historical practices of “hoarding” – or buying far much more storage infrastructure than is actually required to ensure business continuity – without sacrificing on service functionality. For additional context, read Storage Switzerland’s earlier blog, What is Consumption Based Data Protection?.
The consumption-based model can improve the cost efficiency and agility of data protection, but it does not fully alleviate headaches related to data sprawl. The ability to aggregate and obtain centralized visibility and management across all data types and infrastructures is important in today’s volatile and heterogenous storage world. A more intelligent approach to data management that integrates orchestration as well as automation of core management capabilities is emerging as a necessity for IT to optimize data placement and to streamline storage administration.
StorageSwiss Take
“Best effort” data protection SLAs have been a problem for years. In today’s data-driven economy, they are simply unacceptable. However, many IT shops struggle to address these needs against limited budgets, limited IT resources, and fuzzy visibility into the viability of the data protection architecture from the perspective of meeting recovery point and time objectives (RPOs and RTOs). Meanwhile, the industry shift to running applications on heterogeneous infrastructures made up of on-premises systems, cloud-delivered services, virtual machines, containers, and more adds further complexity.
A consumption-driven approach to data protection is a path to potential upfront capex savings – and much more. Depending on the service provider, embracing consumption-based data protection can enable IT to access more current technologies and right-sized infrastructure. It can also provide access to deep expertise in running data protection environments, freeing up IT to focus less on running day-to-day backup operations, and more on supporting strategic, revenue-facing business initiatives.
Arguably most critically, a consumption-based data protection approach opens the door for a more intelligent data management strategy. Embracing an automated, single-pane-of-glass approach to data management is necessary to deliver the right insights to the right users at the right time, against the tide of data growth, infrastructure complexity, and pressure for unprecedented levels of responsiveness.
Watch Storage Switzerland’s webinar in conjunction with HPE and Veeam, “Consumption Based Data Management Providing Peace of Mind,” for further discussion.
Senior Analyst, Krista Macomber produces analyst commentary and contributes to a range of client deliverables including white papers, webinars and videos for Storage Switzerland. She has a decade of experience covering all things storage, data center and cloud infrastructure, including: technology and vendor portfolio developments; customer buying behavior trends; and vendor ecosystems, go-to-market positioning, and business models. Her previous experience includes leading the IT infrastructure practice of analyst firm Technology Business Research, and leading market intelligence initiatives for media company TechTarget.
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