Data management has today become a critical aspect of every business, according to Chris Bowring, a regional director at CA Technologies.
Highlighting the importance of data management during the CA Southern Africa IT Management Symposium at the Sandton Convention Centre yesterday, Bowring noted that from his experience, 86% of the organisations that lose data usually go out of business.
He also pointed out that organisations must also not fall victim to the cost of down time, as it is avoidable.
“In 2010, Europe lost a total of 17 billion hours to down time and you can imagine how much money was lost during these hours.”
According to Bowring, down time affects businesses by directly and indirectly affecting employee costs, employee recovery costs, non-employee expenses, client service value as well as IT recovery costs.
In many cases, said Bowring, organisations believe that they have the necessary data back-ups.
”However, they are wrong as they miss out vital steps. In many cases, some have poor processes whereby they might be using tapes as back-ups. This often leaves many gaps in coverage, as risks and costs are not assessed, investments not maintained while missing the latest technologies,” said Bowring.
To avert such catastrophes, Bowring revealed that of late all talk has been cloud computing. To support his claim, he said, a lot of investment was currently being put in the cloud.
He also indicated that cloud computing is an effective platform to cut costs. “Today everyone is talking about doing much with less; currently it costs $90 to store a terabyte of data in the US; but with cloud computing, these costs will greatly be reduced.”
Describing cloud computing, he said: “Cloud isn't new technology to be managed; it's a new way to deliver and consume technology.”
Furthermore, he said, cloud computing is a necessary platform for it provides more than just back-up.
“Businesses need more than back-up because they need to manage their data more carefully, as there is an explosion of data. With latest devices today, data is also always on the move and sometimes more users are having access to it,” he said.
Giving the other reasons why businesses need more than just back-up, Bowring said organisations need to increase availability of data as there is more access to critical data, more availability of applications, as well as more protection against data loss.
Also, he added, there is a strong need by organisations to employ new technologies, more syndicated management, more integrated technologies like virtualisation and more storage destinations found in cloud computing.
Among the challenges that businesses face when adopting the newer technologies, Bowring said migration of data on and off premise, in and out of the cloud.
“Companies also find it difficult to automate and integrate with back-up and recovery solutions and they are also concerned about lower storage costs through the right balance of on and off premise.”
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