Data protection has never been a hotter topic, and that's good news for every organisation

Data protection is evolving into data management

Cloud backup and associated services are hardly new. Air-gapped backups that somewhat protect against ransomware and other bad actors have been around for a long time. On-demand restore, down to the individual file level, is no longer innovative. But what we see right now is a real revolution in the data management sector.

One of the biggest recent moves by a number of vendors that initially catered for on-premises data has been the introduction of cloud data management. With the rise of storing a company's data on an offsite server managed by a hyperscaler like AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform - or a local specialist in cloud data hosting - managing data in the cloud provides an automated backup strategy, professional support, and ease of access from any location. Multi-cloud IT strategies are here to stay, and data management vendors are moving to support the latest models of IT apace.

For evidence of the importance of the data management sector look no further than how it is rife with investment, mergers and acquisitions right now, and examine the sheer financial value of transactions. Over $3.5 billion of investment has gone into the sector according to CB Insights, and it's not just the big players that are benefitting from this uplift.

Investment decisions like these are, of course, made in anticipation of future returns, and it is innovation in the data management sector that is driving the potential for these returns. The development of new technologies and new approaches to using them is central, and arguably these will not come forward without the effect of a range of forces.

Internal and external forces converge to drive value

Organisations now - quite rightly - face increasingly stringent requirements on data protection and compliance, and must meet them to the highest standard. Threats from malware, hackers and ransomware are not going away any time soon, and organisations need to be sure their backups can withstand the onslaught. Therefore, restores must be reliable and able to be called upon at any time. Besides, organisations are increasingly aware that they need to protect from disasters they cannot foresee - be it natural or man-made.

On a global scale, the IT team needed to find new ways of provisioning workers, backing up, meeting compliance regulations and all the rest, almost overnight.

Technical capabilities inevitably respond to meet these needs. Within the sector, advancements are happening and data protection is evolving into data management as a result.

Managing the data mountain one file at a time

All of this sits within the context of organisations generating more data than ever before, and in the case of the more far sighted, using machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to mine that data for information and insights that will help the organisation refine its focus and deliver what its customers really want.

For AI and ML to reach their full potential, data must be stored collectively, rather than siloed in various ‘cubbyholes' where its value can't be extracted. Here, too, there is great sense in taking a Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) approach.

When backup, restore and disaster recovery exist on the same continuum as compliance, and when the extraction of business intelligence is also on that continuum, data management is a holistic process, not a fragmented one. This is very much the point we are at with DMaaS. It's why investment in data protection is heating up, and why organisations are beginning to stop seeing data protection as a cost centre and start viewing it as part of the overall data management picture.

Critical data needs protection, no matter where it is stored, forcing IT leaders to re-evaluate their backup strategy and vendor selection. It's no longer a question of, 'Does your data protection serve the business?' but, 'How can it do so, better?'

Ezat Dayeh is a senior systems engineering manager, Western Europe at Cohesity