Member Article

World Backup Day 2018 – why it matters

The 31st of this month marks World Backup Day 2018; a day where technology vendors everywhere come together to raise awareness about the importance of data protection. No matter the cause, losing data can have severe repercussions for business in the form of damaged reputation and diminished revenues. Backup is an essential tool for organisations both large and small to reduce their risk in the event of an outage, natural disaster, cyber attack or any other incident.

“Undoubtedly, data protection is a growing challenge for IT teams,” comments Neil Barton, CTO of WhereScape. “On World Backup Day, it is important to remember that organisations should not only have a backup strategy, but also test it regularly to determine if data will be easily recoverable and accessible when needed. It is no secret that data loss can have devastating effects on a company’s brand reputation and customer trust, making the ability to recover data quickly after a disaster critical to business survival.”

Jake Madders, Director at Hyve Managed Hosting agrees with Barton, stating that, “company data is one of the most valuable assets for any organisation and should be at the forefront of your business agenda – yet for many, that just isn’t the case. World Backup Day is a great opportunity to reflect on where yours is stored as well as what the consequences might be should you lose control of it. That means it’s absolutely vital to have a backup solution in place to ensure that your data and systems are consistently available.

“Good managed service providers, for example, should offer a range of solutions that protect data and applications as part of a wider IT strategy,” continues Madders. “The best enterprise-class backup options are often designed specifically for use with multi-platform environments, meaning greater flexibility and choice for you. What’s more, using a securely managed cloud for offsite backups means that you only ‘pay for what you use’ so offer great value for money, so what’s not to like?”

Six Degrees’ Sales and Marketing Director, Dave Ricketts, points out that, “according to findings from the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2018, cyberattacks are the third most likely global risk this year. This statistic should make all organisations feel a lot more precious about their data and conscious of their backup processes.

“However,” Ricketts continues, “for many businesses, the cost of investing in data backup systems can be high, not to mention being operationally intensive and a long-term investment. One option that can alleviate these issues while still providing a high level of protection is, Backup as a Service (BaaS). A good BaaS provider is designed to offer a cost-effective off-site backup solution that is secure, compliant and scalable.

“Whether you opt to backup internally or outsource it to a provider, take the pledge this World BackUp Day to protect mission-critical data. The day will come when you’ll need to be able to restore it.”

For many, World Backup Day probably evokes thoughts of “gold copies” stashed away in a safe place waiting to be retrieved when something goes wrong. However, Rob Strechay, SVP Product at Zerto believes that “this simplistic example belies the fact that solutions for these situations are often complex and painful to execute, particularly at the enterprise level as many organisations are undergoing major IT transformations. The truth is that, planned and unplanned disruptions are only on the rise, sometimes because of the adoption and innovation of the latest technology.

“The convergence of these factors will require businesses to look outside traditional backup capabilities and develop an IT resilience strategy that’s up to the many challenges of digital transformation. To deliver an always-on customer experience, especially while undergoing major changes to an infrastructure, businesses need to ensure they have a modern, risk-free platform in place, which utilises continuous data protection combined with the ability to orchestrate and automate the mobility of applications to the ideal infrastructure. When these capabilities come together, businesses will have an IT resilience strategy to protect their infrastructure and reputation, and also enable innovation and transformation.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Industry Experts .