SO WHAT’S DRIVING THIS CHANGE?
Unprecedented data growth
The majority of large companies store more than half of their business-critical data in remote locations or branch offices (ROBO)1. But the volume of data is exploding with worldwide corporate data doubling every
14 months and expected to reach 10.5 ZB by 2020.
Six years ago, businesses worldwide were dealing with less than 700 TB of corporate data. This had reached 6,000 TB by 2011 and is estimated to be ten times more than that sum today. This means that organisations are ha ving to backup and store more data than ever before, an expensive proposition in a time when IT budgets are getting smaller.
Regulation and risk reduction
Along with more data than ever, organisations are also dealing with increasing amounts of regulation, which means that larger amounts of data have to be stored for longer periods. In response to this complexity, enterprises are looking for ways to simplify their processes and reduce risk. Indeed, with increasing amounts of data to retain, business-critical data is often poorly protected, expensive to archive and time-consuming to restore.
To protect remote data, many users are opting for the installation of twin backup appliances at the ROBO and at the data centre, or alternatively, they are using backup software to backup over the wide area network (WAN). But they are often finding the un-optimised WANs are slow to process large volumes of data and have a detrimental affect on backup and recovery speeds, exceeding backup windows and impacting the ability of the organisation to due business.
Taking data to the cloud
We are now beginning to see a widespread transition to the cloud. This has been delayed somewhat by concerns about scalability and data security in the public cloud. Indeed, traditional clouds had issues, such as proprietary cloud infrastructures, no global deduplication, and few locations. But today’s cloud enables a business-wide operating model, a well-designed and scalable cloud, which allows organisations to buy and scale computing resources, and as a result, perceptions are changing: Gartner now estimates that 50% of organisations will use cloud technologies to provide storage services by 2018.
There are several drivers that make cloud the most attractive option for the modern business.
First and foremost, the cloud is considerably cheaper than maintaining servers. As KPMG analysts explained in the company’s report on enterprise cloud adoption: “our research seems to indicate that cost reduction is becoming the base-level benefit sought from cloud.”2 It is also worth noting that ‘public’ cloud services can be deployed in a ‘private’ manner and cloud services have become increasingly attractive, in part because of the elasticity they offer; the ability to automatically scale up in line with demand. In sum, the outmoded price models that involve high prices and lengthy commitments are something of the past: now you only pay for what you need, when you need it.
Another driver that pushed cloud to the fore is the improvement of internet bandwidth. While most branches had T1 (1.5Mbps) access, it is now commonplace to see 100Mbps Internet access. With improved connectivity, it is now possible to back-up to the cloud in real-time – as well as to use the cloud for other resource-intensive uses, including those relying on large data sets.
With cloud-based data protection, organisations can access a distributed computing model that connects corporate and ROBO into a well-managed whole. Cloud-based solutions now enable organisations to efficiently manage data across thousands of servers, cost effectively. With unified backup, recovery and archiving, ever-incremental backups provide greater storage flexibility and simplify recovery point management.
The main barriers to the cloud, such as performance, cost, and security, have been solved, and the public cloud is now ready to provide scalable long-term storage, backup, and archiving to global enterprises. The technology is moving fast and its emergence is game changing for businesses, and this is being recognised by industry leaders across the board. Jason Buffington, Data Protection Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), reported that, “Cloud-based data protection has fundamentally changed the way people protect endpoint data, and remote-offices / small-businesses are the obvious next step in the evolution of cloud-powered data protection”.
Traditional server backup solutions no longer meet the business needs that most companies are dealing with today. Businesses are driving demand for a practical, cost-efficient and reliable alternative and the solution is in the cloud.
1. IDC Special Study- Hyper consolidation in the Remote Branch Driving Spend- October 2009
2. http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/cloud-service-providers-survey/Documents/the-cloud-takes-shapev3.pdf
