Commvault asked a sample set of our cloud data protection customers, ‘What are your current top data protection priorities?’ The results echo what have been seen in headlines, industry analyst reports and probably many workplaces.
The responses identified the following top cloud protection considerations in order of priority:
#1: disaster recovery preparedness
It’s clear that protecting an organisation’s data is a top priority, but preparedness for a disaster scenario where data recovery is actually invoked is the number one pick.
For 80 percent of surveyed Commvault cloud customers, disaster recovery preparedness was a top priority.
Cloud disaster recovery is enabling organisations to quickly recover data from locations around the globe. While working from home in Sydney or Chicago, IT professionals can quickly restore cloud-based workloads to on-premises facilities, or alternative cloud-based services around the world.
#2: preventing ransomware
There’s a new headline – and a new ransomware code name – almost every week. It’s no surprise that ransomware prevention is also an important consideration for both cloud and on-premises data management professionals.
Commvault helps customers with encrypted and air-gapped backups, alerting and rapid data recovery if an attack does happen.
#3: faster digital transformation
In April 2020 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella delivered the tech giant’s quarterly earnings report to Wall Street, saying, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months. From remote teamwork and learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security – we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything.”
When a workforce needs to suddenly work from home, technology priorities shift to security, productivity and remote data protection.
#4: more cloud adoption
Cloud-based workloads may rely on the high availability of the cloud, but cloud-based workloads still need data protection from a third-party source. Enterprise-grade backup and recovery are not part of a typical cloud agreement.
In the Commvault cloud customer survey, 29 percent of these customers saw increased cloud adoption as a priority.
With more workloads in the cloud, organisations can more quickly transform to be agile and flexible, while having the data needed to serve customers.
In separate research, BCG found about one in three organisations had reported a push for increased cloud migration. While 34 percent of the BCG survey respondents reported accelerated cloud migrations during 2020, 46 percent expect cloud migration to be a major priority over the next 12 to 24 months.
#5: protecting SaaS applications
SaaS (Software as a Service) applications enable a remote workforce, but the data stored in the application needs to align with data backup and recovery SLAs (service level agreements). SaaS vendors are responsible for availability, not data recovery.
Whether an organisation made a switch to Microsoft Office 365 or a SaaS-based industry application, cloud-based applications still need data protection. SaaS application backup and recovery are part of the overall organisational SLAs.
It is possible to streamline adding support for SaaS-based applications, including Office 365, into an existing Commvault implementation. The benefits are huge.