Data protection – necessary evil or competitive edge?

Christopher Pestano, Technical Director,
Data Resilience Solution, Hitachi Data Systems

In an age where we are all becoming
increasingly obsessed with data; its protection has become a necessary burden
for businesses. Investment in the applications, mass storage, backup processes
and training required to keep this data safe is taking its toll on IT teams,
that have little time to sift through data and assess what really needs to be
backed-up and how, meaning for many companies the default approach is to simply
backup everything.

However as data sources continue to grow,
many are asking how to turn data protection from a run-the-business to a
change-the-business process, and if this essential operation can be made more
efficient and cost effective.

Information is a company’s most important
asset, but protecting this data is an expensive and complex process. We noticed
that for every US$1 that a company spends to keep customer information, it spends
at least US$4-6 to protect it. For many of today’s organization’s data
protection is a form of costly but essential insurance; offering a guard
against data losses that could damage brand reputation or leave them open to
lawsuits.

Advances in technology over the last five
years have produced a number of ‘must have’ enterprise solutions – server
virtualization, Internet of Things, data analytics and software-defined data
centers – each one bringing with it a new set of backup requirements and
challenges. As a result, most companies have in place at least three backup solutions
to manage their data protection needs.

With IT budgets at best remaining the
same while data handling and analysis continue to skyrocket, it is unsurprising
that many companies are looking to reduce cost and optimize processes
associated with data protection.

But where should they start? Here are a
few things to consider:

The cost of protection should be
commensurate to the business value of the information. By clearly identifying
what is critical, important and standard data, businesses can start to align
processes with business requirements.

Why do you protect data in the first
place?

This begins by understanding the
different types of recovery and levels of data importance as shown in the below
diagram:

For example, core banking systems which
are critical to a bank’s operation should employ hardware-based snapshots for
operational recovery.  While this
approach costs more, it is essential to allow recovery within minutes to keep the
business going.  This would also minimize
data loss and impact to users.  This fits
in the top left-hand corner of the diagram.

On the other end of the spectrum, things
such as healthcare patient data, which have to be kept for the length of a
patient’s lifetime or more but are not regularly accessed, can be moved on the
right-hand side of the spectrum – either in a private or public cloud as
regulations dictate to reduce costs.

By taking the time to assess where their
data sits on the above diagram, businesses can begin to form a structured and
cost effective approach to data protection.

The business case for using cloud to
store backup data can be compelling and there is a lot of pressure on IT
departments to adopt it. However, while cloud may be the fastest way to reduce
cost, it can also be the fastest way to introduce risk with issues around
security, flexibility and real costs all proving to be common concerns when it
comes to using the cloud.

Security concerns can be allayed with
encryption and ensuring companies ultimately ‘hold the key’ to their data.
Understanding how much the cloud will cost based on expected usage patterns
requires planning, but ensures businesses aren’t surprised by additional
charges or system limitations.

Being able to ensure flexibility is a
slightly harder task. Cloud providers come and go rapidly, and IT is constantly
under pressure to adopt new systems, but regularly migrating data can be a
complex and often risky task. Companies need a ‘concierge to the cloud’; a
solution that can help move data between clouds as companies please to take
advantage of the latest cloud innovations without any headaches is very
critical.

In the past, customers were forced to
take a best of breed approach in order to better support new business
requirements. However, this resulted in a lot of complexity and multiple
solutions as well as spiraling maintenance and training costs. As solutions
catch up on trends, it is becoming easier to take a single solution approach enabling
businesses to support multiple applications in one place. For example, one of
the world’s largest telecommunications companies is using a joint solution of Hitachi Protection Platform and Veritas
NetBackup to support the
varying data protection requirements of customers through-out the world from a
single multi-tenanted system.

Businesses today are expected to be agile
enough to respond to ever-changing customer demands. As a result, IT is no
longer seen as just a provider but more of a partner to the business, expected
to consult on best-practice and oversee transformation.

It may be tempting for some to want to
build a custom data protection solution to maintain complete control but this
comes with a costly set of storage solutions and applications, as well as a
team to run them.

By opting instead for purpose-built
integrated solutions, IT can free up time that was previously used to maintain,
upgrade and troubleshoot custom-built systems to focus more on high value tasks,
such as exploring new value-added capabilities for the business while ensuring predictability
in both cost and maintenance.

The experiences of our customers
demonstrate the impact this can have. A leading global beverage company was
able to reduce data protection requirements by 70 per cent despite an annual
data growth of 30 per cent. Meanwhile a multinational retailer reduced backup time
by 50 per cent and is now able to replicate its data on a nightly basis.

The reality is that data will continue to
take up a large part of IT processes for the foreseeable future so now is the
time to examine how costs can be reduced and processes made more efficient.
Rather than approaching data protection with a single backup as ‘keep
everything’ mindset, businesses now have far more flexibility to make savings,
gain insight and ultimate get value from the data they are required to keep. A
single solution that can pull this all together is invaluable in the fight to
get value from data protection.