Data is growing exponentially year over year. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the global datasphere is projected to expand to over 175 zettabytes by 2025. By comparison, the global volume of data was at 64.2 zettabytes in 2020.
Protecting data is no longer a “nice-to-have” feature. Businesses, regardless of industry or size, experience data loss caused by scores of events — from dreaded system failures to data center shutdowns. While there are a series of steps to mitigate data-loss events, the most proactive method is adopting an enterprise-wide backup solution.
We sat down with data security experts Dwayne Earl, Program Director, AWS Europe and Matt Fox, Global Director, AWS, for insights on helping our partners protect their customers’ data.
This article is a transcript of an interview conversation. The content has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Data reinforces business initiatives more than ever. What are some of the various ways we make use of data?
Dwayne: Data is integral to any business. It’s where we gain our intelligence and a wealth of statistics that fuel major business decisions. With all this data circulating, businesses must think about a plan to back up and protect critical data.
However, if you disregard advice and skip protecting data, there can be serious consequences lying ahead for your business. If you go the route of securing data, it’s ideal to decide how often access is needed. From there, more tactical backup strategies can be determined.
Matt: When it comes to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), they tend to house collected data about their customers. This data supports their CRM (customer relationship management) tools, data regarding transactions on their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), among other key software, and this information is critical to operating their business.
With vast amounts of data circulating, especially for the SMBs, there’s this fear data could be compromised as a result of widespread cybersecurity attacks taking place. Losing this data may bring companies to a standstill and have a significant impact on profit.
Let’s explore trends across the tech landscape on data security. What can we expect for the next 3 to 5 years?
Dwayne: We’re witnessing companies investing in data backup and disaster recovery. This is an area we expect will continue to be emphasized.
For example, many organizations are putting an architectural decision record (ADR) policy in place to track the software architecture being crafted. On-premise storage can be quite expensive, and potentially not the most cost-effective in the long run.
Matt: We have seen a big move to the cloud in the last several years. What has been surprising more recently is a move from cloud to a physical, tightly-managed presence. Companies are evolving to a more hybrid experience with private clouds in the data center fully integrated with the public AWS cloud, and we expect this to continue over the next three to five years.
AWS has hybrid offerings like Outposts and Storage Gateway that enable this, allowing companies to have greater resiliency in their high available/disaster recovery architecture and to choose data that they want to keep on-premise for security reasons and data they are fine storing primarily on public cloud. We have built Click-to-Run™ solutions that help facilitate this kind of hybrid architecture for SMB companies, too.
Using the Veeam Backup and Replication Click-to-Run™ and additional solution offerings, such as Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), S3 Glacier and Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), SMB companies can create the streamlined hybrid data protection architectures that were only accessible for the very largest companies in the past.
With more data circulating the technical ecosystem than ever, what are some data protection challenges partners are facing?
Dwayne: When you look closely at disaster recovery, an organization may have 20+ physical data centers, for example. These physical locations present environmental risks. Leveraging the public cloud for disaster recovery purposes is beneficial in terms of cutting costs and enacting a more environmentally-friendly approach.
Partners can work with TD SYNNEX to better understand how to transition their data backup strategy from on-premise to the public cloud, and ways to overcome any challenges involved.
Matt: There is a movement to democratize data and turn to areas such as data lakes and data clouds where it’s easily shared throughout channels. Many SMB customers are linked to a global supply chain and may be working with large insurance providers or global manufacturers that are requesting data.
At TD SYNNEX, we’re offering solutions that help protect data while guaranteeing access to the right people. Sharing this data in a seamless yet flexible manner that ensures optimal security is key.
Now that we’ve covered some of the challenges, what are the proactive ways partners can enhance their data protection strategies?
Dwayne: Moving to the cloud is the best strategy. We recommend getting started with your local TD SYNNEX team and discussing a plan to back up your data to the cloud.
This can involve Click-to-Run™ solutions to support your strategy. With these solutions, we train you as partners and enhance your skillset, so you can offer these data protection-focused solutions to better secure your customers’ valuable data.
Matt: Customers are tired of completing storage device refreshes every few years — this can cost them several million to fund. We hear of customers switching from their incumbent partner to another partner that can employ a hybrid cloud strategy costing half the amount while enabling better protection.
Engaging in a hybrid cloud conversation with customers is the best step our partners can take, and the Click-to-Run™ solutions we’ve developed enable them to easily pilot this hybrid cloud strategy.
Having this conversation now and looking at cost-effective offerings such as our suite of AWS Data Protection Click-to-Run™ solutions can help you and your business hold onto those long-time customers.
For more information on TD SYNNEX’s Click-to-Run™ solutions, designed to simplify the process of deploying cloud-based solutions for your customers, please visit the Solutions Factory or get a by-the-numbers look at our Solutions Factory’s efficiency.
Sources: International Data Corporation (IDC)
