Data management: multiple clouds, one strategy

Cloud strate­gies are rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the way in which organ­i­sa­tions become agile in cre­at­ing new dig­i­tal ser­vices. While greater agili­ty enables organ­i­sa­tions to beat the com­pe­ti­tion and become first to mar­ket, the need for cus­tomer loy­al­ty and high­er-qual­i­ty cus­tomer ser­vice cre­ates sus­tain­abil­i­ty with increased con­sumer con­fi­dence and trust. These strate­gies lie at the heart of any organisation’s suc­cess in the dig­i­tal age.

There is, how­ev­er, an addi­tion­al key dri­ver required to cre­ate a data-dri­ven busi­ness. This involves lever­ag­ing data to devel­op greater val­ue, while at the same time mit­i­gat­ing risk asso­ci­at­ed with irre­spon­si­ble data use. Cre­at­ing val­ue through the effec­tive use of data improves cus­tomer ser­vice and ser­vice qual­i­ty through per­son­al­i­sa­tion, while respon­si­ble data com­pli­ance increas­es cus­tomer con­fi­dence, dri­ving data con­sent.

For organ­i­sa­tions to become data dri­ven, they require tech­no­log­i­cal change. This means plac­ing sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments around new dig­i­tal ser­vices, adop­tion of cloud and effec­tive man­age­ment of data. Per­haps the great­est chal­lenge for organ­i­sa­tions is that stake­hold­ers of these inno­va­tions sit in both the line-of-busi­ness and IT depart­ments. Col­lab­o­ra­tion is key to sup­port the pace of change as well as enabling IT to cre­ate the oper­a­tional rigour and dis­ci­pline need­ed to deliv­er ser­vice qual­i­ty.

The chal­lenges pre­sent­ed by this col­lab­o­ra­tion are var­ied and com­plex. They include new ser­vices being cre­at­ed in the cloud led by DevOps, the expo­nen­tial increase in data vol­umes linked to dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers owned by the chief data offi­cer and data loca­tion chal­lenges linked to data sov­er­eign­ty reg­u­la­tions policed by IT.

Oth­er chal­lenges arise from dig­i­tal com­pli­ance, which requires a change of approach by the data pri­va­cy offi­cer, as well as increased invest­ment in resilience and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity dri­ven by the threat of ran­somware and data loss with IT own­ing this respon­si­bil­i­ty. The oppor­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion are vast. How­ev­er, the risks are increased by depart­ments oper­at­ing in stovepipes.

“It’s essen­tial, there­fore, that the IT depart­ment and the line-of-busi­ness teams work close­ly togeth­er,” says Jason Too­ley, region­al vice pres­i­dent North­ern Europe at Ver­i­tas, a leader in the data man­age­ment mar­ket. “Only by doing so can they reap the rewards of an agile, secure cloud and data man­age­ment strat­e­gy that will become the foun­da­tion of the organisation’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.”

Cus­tomers are dri­ving the adop­tion of cloud espe­cial­ly for new dig­i­tal work­loads, cre­at­ing large amounts of unstruc­tured dig­i­tal data, which reside on pub­lic cloud ser­vice provider plat­forms. Cus­tomers are real­is­ing the oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties and ser­vice avail­abil­i­ty in the cloud, as well as the man­age­ment of data, is their respon­si­bil­i­ty rather than that of their cloud ser­vice provider. In case of a data breach, it is the organ­i­sa­tion that will be fined and suf­fer the asso­ci­at­ed rep­u­ta­tion­al brand dam­age rather than the cloud ser­vice provider.

“In pri­vate cloud trans­for­ma­tions, sup­port­ing work­loads that can’t be moved to a pub­lic cloud ser­vice provider, the focus is on the same cloud char­ac­ter­is­tics of per­for­mance, scale-out, elas­tic­i­ty and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit,” says Mr Too­ley. “In pri­vate cloud envi­ron­ments with greater IT con­trol, cus­tomers can utilise the same oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties that they have used in suc­cess­ful­ly man­ag­ing ser­vice and data. They can apply these capa­bil­i­ties to cur­rent work­loads and new work­loads in a con­sis­tent way.”

Cus­tomers are now open­ly talk­ing about data man­age­ment encom­pass­ing pro­tec­tion and recov­ery, gov­er­nance, resilience and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity as key ten­ants of their abil­i­ty to main­tain ser­vice and become a data-dri­ven busi­ness. This forms part of their wider mul­ti-cloud strat­e­gy.

“Man­ag­ing data from the point of view of risk on the one hand and val­ue on the oth­er is a fine bal­ance,” says Mr Too­ley. “It’s essen­tial that capa­bil­i­ties allow for increased democ­ra­ti­sa­tion to empow­er the line-of-busi­ness stake­hold­ers who are look­ing for pace and auton­o­my. But it’s equal­ly crit­i­cal that IT brings its exper­tise and expe­ri­ence to deal­ing with the chal­lenges faced in sup­port­ing the ‘run the busi­ness’ require­ments. The need to sup­port on-premise mis­sion-crit­i­cal ser­vices, vir­tu­al appli­ca­tions and new dig­i­tal work­loads in a con­sis­tent, reli­able way remains the pri­ma­ry goal for both IT and the busi­ness.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it veritas.com