Addressing the Gaps in Your Customers’ Data Protection Strategy

The EMC Global Data Protection Index introduced last month shows the business consequences of misaligned data protection strategies.  And the survey results also give us a glimpse into disasters waiting to happen from inadequate protection for next generation workloads.

My previous blog outlined some of the key findings.  In this blog, I’ll give you three questions to ask your customers to uncover gaps in their data protection strategy.

Question: Are data protection silos costing your business?  

For a long time, we at EMC have talked about the risks posed by “accidental architectures.”  The accidental architecture is the result of disparate and often disjointed data protection approaches for different parts of the infrastructure, such as virtual environments, different enterprise applications, and remote offices or branch locations.   Without a unified view of data protection, a siloed approach can lead to holes that expose your customers.

The survey shows that organizations using three or more vendors for data protection solutions lost three times as much data as those who unified their data protection strategy around a single vendor.  And it also comes at a hefty cost – organizations with three vendors spend an average of $3 million more on their data protection infrastructure compared to those with just one.

Question: Does your data protection strategy match the value of your data/applications?

Not all data and applications are equal.  And with the volume of data generated, it is impractical to think that everything must be equally protected.  This is why your customers need a strategy that spans a continuum of data protection, providing appropriate protection and availability based on the business value of their applications and data.  Mission critical applications need continuous availability, while other applications could be supported by a point-in-time copy.   Additionally, select data may need to be securely retained for long term purposes to meet regulatory and/or corporate governance requirements.  

Yet, the survey shows that only 9% of organizations are using a continuous availability approach as part of their data protection, which would indicate that mission critical applications are not adequately protected.  Additionally, 41% use backup as the primary protection strategy and more than one-third are still storing backup tapes offsite.

Question: Is your data protection strategy up to today’s challenges? 

The agility and flexibility of hybrid cloud are fundamentally changing IT.  At the same time, varying degrees of data protection offered by “born in the cloud” application providers could leave your customers vulnerable to disruption.   

The survey shows that 30% of all primary data is located in some form of cloud storage, yet 76% of those surveyed lack a recovery plan for hybrid cloud.   If not managed properly, hybrid cloud runs the risk of extending the “accidental architecture” and perpetuating a misalignment of protection to the value of the data/applications.   

There are hundreds of data points that our partners can use with their customers from this survey.  We have data at a global, regional and country level for the 24 countries that were part of the study.  My advice to partners: don’t get caught up in the numbers.  Use this project to have a different conversation with your customers to elevate the business importance of data protection. 

All of the findings are available to our partners on our microsite.