Cutting Vendor Lock-in – as well as costs – from the DRaaS Equation
Disaster recovery (DR) is too expensive and too cumbersome to meet the near-zero recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) required by today’s business environment. Many organizations are turning to the cloud for DR to downsize their on-premises data center footprint, to streamline management for improved operational efficiencies, and to obtain more agile and cost-effective, on-demand and pay-per-use capabilities. The problem is that many first-generation DR-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solutions do not support cloud-native applications, and they lock the business in to using that one specific cloud provider.
Introducing Actifio Sky Platform Multi-Cloud Mobility and Automation
At its Data Driven 2019 customer conference, Actifio launched its new Actifio Sky Platform Multi-Cloud Mobility and Automation solution. Actifio Sky is a copy data management (CDM) platform that is deployed as a virtual machine (VM) appliance. The new Multi-Cloud Mobility and Automation capability converts on-premises VMs and physical servers into cloud-native VMs. It then uses Actifio’s OnVault backup and recovery technology for elastic object storage capacity, and for the ability to conduct automated restores directly to the cloud object store.
The solution supports both on-premises and cloud applications, and cloud object storage platforms supported include Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and IBM Cloud. Because the technology draws from Actifio’s Virtual Data Pipeline, which virtualizes the copy, store, move, and restore of data, data no longer needs to be physically migrated to block storage for faster performance, saving time and money (for instance on higher-cost block storage systems and networking bandwidth). The result to customers is lower-cost and more agile and scalable capacity and disaster recovery services, improved business availability, and the freedom to use multiple cloud providers without lock in.
StorageSwiss Take
DRaaS stands to bring a new level of scalability and cost-efficiency to that is must needed among enterprises and smaller companies alike. It is not worth it, however, if the DRaaS solution locks the enterprise into a specific cloud platform. Organizations’ cost and performance requirements are dynamic. The data governance and privacy regulations they must follow are also changing frequently. As a result, they need the ability to work with multiple cloud providers, and to migrate between cloud platforms, as their needs evolve. The Actifio Sky Platform Multi-Cloud Mobility and Automation provides this flexibility, and it provides an easier and less disruptive path for even large, mission-critical databases and workloads to be migrated across multi-cloud environments.
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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