“Enterprises have embraced the Always-On mindset. Providing employees with access to data wherever they are, irrespective of the device used, has become essential to remaining competitive. This has led to the evolution of data and expectations around its availability,” he says.
Part of this, Schuck believes, is the need for complete data visibility and the need to govern it more effectively.
“It is easy to get swept up in the excitement around the opportunities that digitalisation provides. However, solid business principles still apply. Not knowing where all organisational data is stored, and who is accessing it, have become central challenges in this journey.”
Gartner defines digitalisation as the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities. However, these opportunities mean very little when data loss occurs inside the organisation. Data is notorious for the associated issues around resiliency, especially when one factors in the off-site component.
“The ability to recover quickly and continue business operations are fundamental to the Always-On enterprise. But how can this resiliency issue be addressed, especially in light of the growth of digitalisation? Clearly, there is a need for high-speed recovery, data loss avoidance and complete visibility, more so when considering the information which is stored off-site. This puts the onus on data governance strategies to ensure data remains available in the event of a crisis,” he says.
Organisations can ill afford downtime in the ultra-competitive environments of today. Having assets locked into a digital enterprise makes data even more important than before. The richness of back-end data, especially in the wake of the exponential increase of its sources, means every hour (sometimes minutes) of downtime could significantly, and negatively, impact the likelihood of an effective recovery.
The cloud has an important role to play in business continuity. According to the 2016 Veeam Availability Report, half of local respondents confirmed that they are using the cloud to store backups off-site for disaster recovery purposes. Additionally, 40 percent are using the cloud for archiving purposes, and 37 percent for replication and high availability. A further 37 percent confirmed that they are not using the cloud for data protection.
“While the focus on Always-On availability is not feasible from a cost-perspective on all the data inside the enterprise, there are assets that require fast recovery times. Being able to get the business up and running within 15 minutes of a failure enables the company to carry on as normal while the rest of the non-mission critical data is restored,” says Schuck.
He adds that the adoption of cloud technology has become mainstream in South Africa, and while organisations are still experimenting with the business model that best suits their needs, the cloud is here to stay.
“Combine this cloud-centric approach with the digitalisation imperative, and you have the perfect mix of events for a data-rich business environment. Ensuring that effective disaster recovery and business continuity plans are in place to keep that data safe and available need to be part of this evolution,” he adds.
In all of this, it is clear that the move to Always-On is inevitable. But for it to be successful, executives need to become active sponsors of this drive. With this support, IT departments have the opportunity to challenge legacy and status quo attitudes within the data centre.
“Traditional backup and recovery solutions will only take one so far, but they are not appropriate for the evolving digital business and are definitely not able to provide the round-the-clock levels of immediacy needed to be Always-On. Simply put, enterprises need to ask themselves one question: Do I want to prosper in this new, digital economy, or fade away into extinction?”
