Category Archives: Cloud Migration

Cloud Migration, Fintech, News, Tech Thought Leadership

Harjott Atrii: Why moving to the cloud makes business sense for the financial sector?

By Harjott Atrii, Executive Vice President and Global Head, Digital Foundation Services, at Zensar

Traditionally, the financial sector has been a late adopter of cloud technologies, focusing instead on on-premise IT frameworks. However, the last year has seen an upheaval in the way IT is consumed across all businesses. Last year we saw global businesses across the BFSI sector come to an almost standstill. Those firms that were early adopters of digital were the only ones to remain customer centric for most part by staying operational. Furthermore, customer experience took centre stage as all users demanded the superior engagement offered by leading e-commerce firms.

Gartner estimates, the worldwide spending on public cloud will grow by 18.4 percent in 2021 to a total of 304.9 billion dollars, up from 257.5 billion dollars in 2020. Further, another Gartner report states that the proportion of IT spending that is shifting to cloud has increased in the aftermath of rapid adoption of the “work from home” model, with cloud projected to make up 14.2 percent of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024, up from 9.1 percent in 2020.

Moving to the cloud has multiple inherent benefits for the financial sector because of its ability to offer pay as you use, platform agnostic features, cost efficiency, business continuity, speed, agility and flexibility.

Recently, we helped one of our BFSI clients adopt Hyperconverged Infrastructure to deliver flexible, scalable, and easy to manoeuvre infrastructure. The client is a global Fortune 500 provider of risk management products and services headquartered in the U.S. They provide specialty and niche market insurance products across diverse insurance sectors and operate in over 20 countries. We were successful in delivering higher levels of availability and reliability with data-driven capacity planning, leading to a faster network service (for both on-premises and cloud) with migration to infrastructure. The business saw a significant reduction in Total Cost of Ownership, and a 70% increase in cost savings near the zero-touch operation of a multi-cloud solution using our in-house Artificial Intelligence for IT Operators platform.

I’ve found it extremely interesting to observe the growing interest amongst global financial entities, who are choosing to move to the cloud and adopt some key customer facing operations too. I believe this sector is realising that getting future-ready means adopting to the cloud and becoming a digital enterprise. The speed at which cloud services are adapting to sector specific needs is also helping by allowing organisations to make quicker and more justified decisions. Plus, cloud providers are adhering to creating regulation friendly offerings for the financial sector which is making it easier to deploy.

Taking ahead the example of the work we did for our customer cited earlier, the convoluted state of its technology was the biggest challenge that the customer faced. The organisation had a disparate technology landscape with its primary data-centre in the United States. A complex application landscape with fragmented on-premises, hybrid and public cloud footprints were impeding business agility and delaying the time to market of critical products and services. Additionally, there was a cost burden of managing sizable on-premise infrastructure.

The lack of the right technology needed to support a fully automatic Infrastructure as Code (IaC) private cloud offering, had given rise to a monolithic architecture driven by manual and time-consuming processes. The absence of automation and orchestration for its vast on-premise environment led to excessive manual intervention and a large number of human errors which in turn reduced the product release velocity for business users.

Below are some of the key benefits the financial sector can leverage when adopting to the cloud.:


Scale and speed

Cloud accelerates capacity and operational bandwidth, while doing so at a fast pace. Creating new offerings, taking them faster to market, while remaining within regulatory norms is now easily possible.

Superior customer experience

Customers are spoilt for choice when it comes to digital buying and experience. This was felt very visibly during the early days of the pandemic fraught with lockdowns etc. making digital the only way to transact. This has resulted in customers demanding better digital offerings and a simplified, easy to use experience when interacting with brands.

Cost-efficiency

One of the biggest learnings from the global pandemic has been the need to be lean and efficient while running all businesses. The financial sector did feel the brunt due to its heavy reliance on maintaining the expensive on-premise frameworks. The return on digital is very visible for a financial entity looking at remaining competitive and wanting to respond timely to market dynamics.

The cloud enables businesses to launch products faster in the market and at a lower cost. The ability to apply sophisticated technology – such as analytics quickly – can transform an organisation’s ability to adapt and create products and services in response to market and competitive changes. This helps to maintain differentiation and competitive edge in a dynamic marketplace.

Scalability and flexibility

One of the most lucrative benefits of moving to the cloud is its scalability, given the sudden need to respond to market volatility. The recent global situation clearly underscored the need for scale at operations as well as flexibility to respond to changes effectively and efficiently. Cloud technology can support the financial sector by gaining customer insights with behavioural analytics so that every click and every tap on their offerings or website can be managed.

Secure cloud

This sector is all about customer trust and secure operations. Security is at the core of all new cloud offerings. In fact, cloud security has matured to include sophisticated security measures and controls. Security and data privacy are some key concerns that impact adoption across this sector. However there have been strides in the manner in which cloud is designed to drive consistency and automation across the growing attacks and a heightened focus on security and data privacy features are integrated also. The best option lies in adopting a hybrid cloud model which complies with privacy regulations with secure protocols across public and private data.

While the above reasons do offer many reasons to move to the cloud, financial services have to keep their customers at the core while making this decision. Adopting a robust cloud strategy helps in not only enhanced customer engagement, but it also results in a more successful business model. A cloud strategy will certainly help in making a financial services business more resilient, dynamic, competitive and ready to embrace future opportunities, today.

 

 

 

Cloud Migration

Could Your Business Benefit from A Cloud Backup Solution?

Written by Sarah Doherty, Product Marketing Manager at iland 

The average cost of downtime has been estimated at £193K per hour, so every minute counts if your systems are down or your data has been compromised. Data loss and security breaches are becoming increasingly common events in today’s world. It is not a matter of when, but if a disaster of any kind will happen. All of an organisation’s information must be protected and readily available at all times in order for a business to survive. Considering this fact, the importance of backups cannot be overestimated and backing up vital data is an integral part of any business’s IT strategy.

Ensuring effective off-site backup solutions is essential to any business, whether large or small. If an organisation’s backups are not well-managed, comprehensive disaster recovery becomes difficult, if not impossible. Business interruptions happen. It’s how you respond that is important to your bottom line.

All organisations are starting to realise that IT innovation is a top priority while also understanding that they need to be agile enough to quickly pivot and keep running when disruptions occur. Whether you are concerned about compliance or industry specific data protection regulations, you need to mitigate the risk associated with lost or corrupted data and that data needs to be ready to be restored at a moment’s notice.

So firstly, what is backup? Backup is the process of making an extra copy (or multiple copies) of data. You backup data to protect it. You might need to restore backup data if you encounter an accidental deletion, database corruption, or problem with a software upgrade. It is important to have a backup solution in place. Backup protects your data in case of theft (a single laptop to office break-ins), employee accidents (deletion of an important file), or a technical issue (crashed hard drive). With this protection, you can access a copy of your data and restore it easily.

We all know that offsite data backup is something we should be doing. But, it’s not something that we all do. Cloud backup services are an insurance policy to protect your data from any number of data loss threats. It gives you peace of mind. Consider the following data loss situations. They are all too common and could send your business down the drain if an offsite backup solution is not in place.

  • Deleting files: Updating files or deleting them are common activities.
  • Viruses and malware: New viruses attack computers every day.
  • Mechanical damages: IT hardware/software is a fragile part of business networks.
  • Power failures: Power failures affect operation systems and hardware.
  • Computer theft: It’s a tragedy to lose both your computer and data at the same time – especially with more remote workers than ever.
  • Natural Disasters: These continue to occur on a daily basis

In all these cases, another factor to consider is the cost of data recovery. The cost of professional recovery can be considerably more than maintaining an offsite backup. The best data recovery case is one that uses a reliable, offsite backup solution.

Specifically, Secure Cloud Backup provider can help with the following:

  • Provide secure cloud storage for retaining up-to-date offsite copies of your virtual and physical server backups with easy restoration to your primary site.
  • Assist with optional integrated “air-gapped” 7-day retention of backup data providing additional protection against ransomware and other threats.
  • Deliver data from recovery-aware backups.
  • In addition to receiving these services, using cloud backup solutions provides the following benefits to your business:
  • Decreased costs for disaster recovery testing and programs
  • Replaces capex with predictable usage costs
  • Offsite IT team available 24/7 in case of disaster or management questions
  • Less burden for your in-house IT staff
  • Reduced RTOs/RPOs to meet ever-changing business needs
  • Focused expertise gained by engaging offsite management

Keep your business up and running all day, every day. Organisations shouldn’t wait for disaster to happen; they should take a proactive stance in leveraging cloud backup solution providers extensive IT backup and recovery experience, backed by proven methodologies with a range of recovery capabilities. For most organisations, backup strategies are absolutely critical to maintaining the future of the business. Organisations must address IT recovery by creating a comprehensive solution that encompasses people, process and technology.

Cloud Migration, News

Gerry Tombs: Why cloud security is more important than ever

Written by Gerry Tombs, CEO, Clearvision

In today’s modern, digitised world, persuading organisations to move to the cloud is like pushing against an open door. The business case for cloud is clear – flexibility, agility, and cost savings. Likewise, cloud technology makes scaling faster, smarter, and more affordable than on-premise servers. No wonder 90% of companies are in the cloud. This confirms that cloud usage was already mainstream in 2019; this has increased exponentially in 2020.

Operating in the cloud undoubtedly delivers significant advantages and likewise security improvements for most organisations, but with the increasing number of data breaches and cyber attacks, organisations do need to be more cognisant of what cloud security they have put in place.

I say this because we are seeing a huge uptick right now in cyber attacks, especially because many organisations that adopted working from home practices during the government stay-at-home orders have operated remotely. COVID-19 has undoubtedly amplified the susceptibility of organisations to such attacks – particularly ransomware where new COVID-19-themed strains have been introduced. Criminals will never let a good crisis go to waste and workers connecting to their corporate headquarters from home allow attackers to target companies in many more ways. These tactics have always existed, but we are seeing increased interest highlighting that criminals are indeed adapting and evolving their tactics to the new remote-access world we now find ourselves in.

Likewise, cybercriminals are getting smarter about whom they’re targeting and, as a result, they are having more success getting ransoms paid. They have identified a ‘sweet spot’ of companies and sectors that aren’t doing the right things around cloud security and are going after them in the knowledge that they have no alternative but to pay up to retrieve their data. Even those sectors that are doing a better job on cybersecurity aren’t immune – the legal sector is a classic example. A recent legal sector report entitled ‘Sector 17 – The State of Cybersecurity in the Legal Sector’, reveals that, despite excellent standards of cybersecurity, 100% of law firms analysed were targeted in attacks by threat actors.

Some sectors have taken a trade-off approach to cyber attack risk by weighing the cost of putting in place effective security controls against the lower cost of paying a cyber insurance premium. As a result, insurance companies are being hard hit covering ransom payments and there are suggestions that they are planning to tighten up on the security standards they require policyholders to meet if they expect to be compensated in the event of a breach.

Therefore, in light of this evolving threat landscape, what should organisations consider in relation to their own cloud security?

At the outset, when scoping a move to the cloud, businesses need to assess security in the context of this environment and evaluate Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) accordingly. Moving to the cloud means adopting a partnership approach to security that requires high levels of trust and transparency between all parties and these should be established at the start of the relationship.

One of the big benefits of partnering with a CSP is the ability to access the security expertise of a business whose success depends on providing the most advanced levels of protection. Cloud providers have economies of scale that allow us to invest far more into talent and adoption of the latest innovative infrastructure protection and defence technology than any single organisation could commit financially.

Due diligence around your CSP is important when entrusting core systems to a third party. Therefore, take the time to work with your cloud service provider to ensure that your cloud is secure and well maintained. It is important to recognise that high-level security concerns – like unauthorised data exposure and leaks, weak access controls, susceptibility to attacks, ransomware, and availability disruptions – affect traditional IT and cloud systems alike. As a result, a similar approach to maintaining both your on-premise and your cloud security environment should be adopted. For example, you should:

  • Know that your data and systems are safe in the cloud.
  • Have visibility and be able to see the current state of security.
  • Know immediately if anything unusual happens.
  • Be in a position to trace and respond to unexpected events.

As more businesses shift to the cloud because of all the benefits that I’ve highlighted above, security will become an even more important aspect. We know, for example, that during the global crisis, 82% of enterprises increased their cloud usage according to the Snow Software Cloud Use Survey – June 2020. It is fantastic to see how this usage is growing and continues to grow, but likewise important to ensure that you have the right security in place. This means making sure any weak links are eliminated and the appropriate access controls are in place.

Cloud Migration, Tech Thought Leadership, Thought Leadership

Why do you need a global footprint for your cloud?

By Sarah Doherty, Product Marketing Manager at iland Cloud

With the increased awareness around cloud solutions, most organisations immediately think about reducing cost and shortening time-to-market. As more ideas around cloud are discussed, other criteria like performance, security, compliance, workload segmentation, and how to integrate the cloud become more relevant to an existing environment. The profile of a global cloud footprint; however, is an equally important consideration.

It may be time to think about why having a standardised global cloud footprint matters. Here are ten good reasons why:

  1. Data sovereignty, privacy laws and local regulations are real.Your business can be impacted if these regulations are not properly followed. Choosing a cloud provider with a strong global footprint not only gives you the ability to comply with local regulations in the countries where your organisation does business but provides the ability to manage your cloud footprint from a global level, which is more efficient and cost effective.
  2. Keep your end users closer. Any organisation wants the right to choose where apps are delivered and where the data is stored. Whether it is about performance, latency issues, data privacy or data sharing; as more of the IT footprint is migrated into the cloud, it is critical to have a provider who offers the flexibility to decide where that footprint lives. These are decisions that should be based on the business, not dictated by your service provider.
  3. Simplify with a single global contract.For many multinational businesses, completing contract negotiations in each country where a business is conducted can be a daunting task that may bring projects to a standstill. Finding the right cloud provider that delivers an overarching global contract allows your organisation to undergo this process one time which will save time and money for your organisation. In addition, having a larger global contract allows for more power and the ability to negotiate better pricing while standardising costs. This can help when rolling out customer facing products and applications in which there is the need to present simple chargeback or pricing options.
  4. Standardize with a global SLA (Service Level Agreements).Getting a standard, global SLA (Service Level Agreement) provides the ability to offer that same SLA to end users. No two cloud providers ever offer the same SLAs, so being able to easily define that across the regions where your organisation does business can help improve service and management of your business SLA’s.
  5. Consistent IT service catalogue availability.Choosing the right cloud provider allows for the ability to build out a standard IT service catalogue, group application templates together and distribute all of it globally with little to no effort.
  6. Streamline with single pane of glass management interface.Having a standardised management interface greatly simplifies IT operations and deployment methodologies. This covers items like alert notices, IT Service catalogue items, reporting and analytics, and support which then indicates how those feedback into the IT department.
  7. Standardise support with ITIL. When choosing a cloud provider, look for standardised onboarding and support levels that compliment your organisation’s environment.
  8. Facilitate the path towards a global cloud strategy. Many multinational companies are still undertaking the path to a global cloud strategy. Evaluating and ultimately selecting a global cloud provider can facilitate this process and provide a framework for your global IT organisation to streamline and standardise operations.
  9. Compliance cannot be ignored.Another key initiative is compliance which needs to be accurately addressed so as not to delay or stall key business activities. A cloud service provider should be focused on global compliance issues while enabling your organisation to standardise this initiative across all the regions where your business is conducted.
  10. Innovation can happen anywhere.As enterprises increasingly rely on innovation to drive new market demand; IT departments need to be ready to support all these activities wherever it occurs. The cloud takes away the need for sizable up-front investments in hardware while also providing the ability to spin up “start-up-like” environments whenever and wherever. Think of it as your global laboratory and that lab can be moved or replicated at any time, giving optimal flexibility to the innovative projects for your business.

At iland, we are always working with our multinational customers to better understand challenges that are faced within an IT infrastructure. Our goal is to provide the tools and simplicity that is needed in all cases. We have developed a resilient global cloud footprint that consists of 10 data centres in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific regions. Each state-of-the-art facility is host to the workloads of growing businesses, both local and global, requiring additional capacity, local presence, or sophisticated disaster recovery support. And we have backup facilities at every location. The expansion into these data centres has been driven primarily by customer needs. Low-cost resources are not enough in leading a successful migration to the cloud, it takes a cloud service provider that can keep up with your business needs while helping you streamline your organisation’s processes in all the places where you do business.

To learn more about iland, visit: https://www.iland.com/

Cloud Migration, News

How a Hybrid Integration Platform Can Drive Innovation

Written by Asanka Abeysinghe, Chief Technology Evangelist at WSO2

Migrating to the cloud

Digital transformation and the transition to the cloud can deliver agility, profitability, new revenue streams and lead to exponential growth.  However, there are a number of challenges that can stop an enterprise from moving to a complete cloud solution. These include the need to adhere to data laws (where regulations and policies prevent companies from moving all their data into the cloud), the necessity of taking a phased approach to shifting existing systems in order to mitigate any negative impact on the business, and other requirements such as security and performance.

Moreover, the increasing complexity of integrating on-premises systems with cloud offerings—which include software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, vast amounts of data, and an explosion of APIs—can overwhelm integration architects and developers. In this environment, connecting and standardising an organisation’s data and business processes, across its entire application landscape, places a significant strain on traditional technologies, methods, and abilities.

This is where a hybrid integration platform (HIP) can really help to accelerate technology changes, drive cloud adoption, and modernise integrations.  Let me give you an example – a large multinational sports shoe manufacturer provides ‘trainer aficionados’ mobile access to the brand’s premium training shoe lines via an app, which enables users to set notifications for upcoming releases and track their order status. The brand’s limited-edition shoes generate such demand that they tend to sell out instantly, making it crucial to have digital channels that can scale to bolster surging customer volumes. Also, owing to recent IoT initiatives, for example, information retrieved from sensors in running shoes and smartwatches, integration teams now have to deal with a massive increase in data from thousands of endpoints.

“In most cases, the traditional integration toolkit, a set of task-specific integration tools, is unable to address this level of complexity,” according to the ‘Smarter with Gartner’ article. “Organisations need to move toward what Gartner calls a hybrid integration platform or HIP.”  Gartner goes on to say that, “the HIP is the ‘home’ for all functionalities that ensure the smooth integration of multiple digital transformation initiatives in an organisation.”

 

What is a hybrid integration platform?

For those less familiar, hybrid integration is the information exchange between multiple applications that are on-premises and in the cloud; a HIP should easily and seamlessly integrate these applications to deliver business functionality. Ideally, it should also provide support for standard and proprietary protocols with minimum configuration.

Forrester describes HIPs as, “Technologies that simplify and reduce the cost of the development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of application and data interfaces.” Now, more than ever, HIPs are key to the success and the survival of an enterprise. Based on a recent study by Research and Markets, spending on hybrid integration platforms is expected to grow to $33.6 billion in 2022 from $17.14 billion in 2017, which is a CAGR of 14.4%. And, by 2022, Gartner expects 65% of large organisations will implement HIPs to power digital transformation efforts.

 

So, what are the benefits?

These platforms reduce development costs and speed integrating cloud and on-premises systems by providing a simplified development experience with built-in capabilities. They also provide secure communication between cloud and on-premises applications as well as well-designed SaaS application connectors and reusable integration templates for commonly used customer use cases.

Additionally, a HIP delivers the ability to seamlessly integrate on-premises systems with business partner systems, mobile applications, IoT devices, and SaaS applications. This eliminates the need to implement complicated integration scenarios from scratch. Companies can reuse platform-provided functionality to speed integration and reduce maintenance efforts.  Other benefits include faster data integrations because it breaks data silos.  Managed APIs that expose an organisation’s data with security and access controls to rapidly build their digital platforms, as well as managed cloud offerings that cater to an organisation’s business requirements.

 

What should you look for when evaluating the right HIP?

Choosing the right HIP can be challenging; here are some of the most important aspects to think about:

Application and data integration. One of the key aspects of a HIP is the ability to integrate different applications and data formats and standards to deliver business functionality. IDC expects 49% of the world’s stored data to reside in public cloud environments by 2025. The HIP should provide capabilities such as content-based routing, message transformation, and support for standard and well-known proprietary protocols. Moreover, the platform should be capable of handling data at rest and in transit, in the cloud, and on-premises.

Full API lifecycle management. APIs are key to modern integration requirements. An enterprise should select a full lifecycle API management solution that works well with middleware solutions. This will empower an organisation to publish, promote, version, and secure APIs, as well as manage their usage. For example in this Forbes post, enterprises with advanced API management processes experience up to 47% better business results as compared to enterprises with basic API management.

Cloud-Native Capabilities. Many organisations are moving to the cloud to lower staffing and infrastructure costs and to reap the benefits of cloud computing. However, to truly benefit from this, the selected integration platform should be lean and lightweight. Also, many integration solutions need additional support for deployment automation, scaling, containerised applications, and CI/CD workflows.

Managed file transfer capabilities. Managed file transfer (MFT) refers to a secure and efficient transfer of data from one system to another. This can be between cloud, on-premises, or cloud and on-premises instances. MFT solutions can take the form of on-premises software as well as SaaS solutions. Having this capability within the HIP eliminates the added cost brought on by integrating a separate tool.

More importantly, an enterprise should select a vendor that is completely aligned with the company’s digital strategy and will support its execution. One key aspect that is often overlooked is the strength of the vendor’s partner network and the quality of its consultants and supporting services. These aspects play a vital role throughout the lifespan of a project, from inception to maintaining the system once it goes live.

The cloud and a host of related technologies, which now underlies much of the internet, have enabled modern enterprises to leverage enhanced computing capabilities and break data silos, which is a key driver for digital transformation. Today, almost every organisation is in a hybrid state with multiple back-end systems, repositories, siloes, workloads in the cloud, and on-premises operations and the push for higher productivity continues to drive innovation. To fully realise all the competitive advantages that digital transformation can deliver, integration leaders should strategically implement the right HIP to ensure success.

Cloud Migration, Data, News, Tech

Cohesity Announces Strategic Collaboration with AWS to Deliver Comprehensive Data Management as a Service

Cohesity today announced that it has formed a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to address the growing customer need for data management that is flexible, available, scalable, and reliable. Together, both companies are bringing to market a modern Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) offering unlike any other on the market today.

The DMaaS solution is designed to provide enterprise and mid-size customers with a radically simple way to back up, secure, govern, and analyze their data, all managed directly by Cohesity and hosted on AWS.

As data continues to grow exponentially, many organizations are looking to manage data in ways that allow their IT teams to focus on policy versus infrastructure, provide consumption-based pricing, accelerate the move to the cloud, make it easy to derive value from data, remove data infrastructure silos, and support multiple use cases — including data backup and archiving, disaster recovery, file and object services, copy data management, and analytics.

“AWS is delighted to establish a strategic collaboration with Cohesity as we share common goals — helping customers lower costs, become more agile, innovate faster, and do more with data,” said Doug Yeum, Head of Worldwide Channels and Alliances, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Working with Cohesity, we are charting a new course in how data is managed in an as a service model, leveraging disruptive, modern data management capabilities from Cohesity, and industry-leading cloud services from AWS.”

As part of the strategic collaboration, Cohesity and the AWS Partner Network (APN) are investing in resources to design the DMaaS solution on AWS and to engage in joint go-to-market activities. Additionally, Amazon has made an equity investment in Cohesity.

“This collaboration between Cohesity and AWS shows a continued commitment to bringing data management solutions to enterprise and mid-size customers that provide unmatched simplicity, flexibility, and reduced total cost of ownership,” said Mohit Aron, CEO and Founder, Cohesity. “Cohesity and AWS are also focused on helping customers derive value from data. Through AWS, customers can access a wealth of AWS services, including Amazon Macie, to help customers meet compliance needs, and Amazon Redshift for analytics. We are thrilled to collaborate with AWS and look forward to ushering in a new era in data management for customers globally.”

“The DMaaS solution from Cohesity and AWS is a significant improvement over what’s available on the market today,” said Michael Graff, Senior Manager, IT Architecture, Dolby Laboratories. “I’ve been using Cohesity and AWS for years and both have brought amazing value to our organization. Now, I’m even more excited about a comprehensive DMaaS solution that can provide even greater simplicity, choice, and flexibility from best-of-breed cloud and data management providers.”

Cohesity Helios: The Foundation for Data Management as a Service

The foundation for this new DMaaS solution is Cohesity Helios, a proven SaaS-based data platform that currently serves more than 1,500 customers. Today, Helios empowers customers to see, manage, and act on their data globally across environments which they manage. Moving forward, customers will also have the option to use Helios to do the same for data that resides in a Cohesity-managed environment. Through this offering, customers will be able to benefit from:

  • A unique, comprehensive set of data management services: Within the DMaaS solution, customers will be able to subscribe to discrete data management offerings addressing a wide range of use cases — all from one provider. Accessing each of these capabilities through Cohesity — versus selecting one provider for backup, another for disaster recovery, and yet others for file and object services, copy data management, data security and governance — reduces infrastructure silos and addresses mass data fragmentation.
  • Advanced security and ransomware detection: Helios currently analyzes over 400,000 events daily and uses machine learning (ML) to detect anomalies that could signal a ransomware attack in progress. DMaaS customers can use these capabilities to detect, respond, and rapidly recover from such an attack.
  • Data management made simple: Customers will have the ability to easily and seamlessly manage their existing on-premises and cloud environments, as well as the policies for their data in the new Cohesity-managed environment all through Cohesity Helios.
  • A shift to predictability and simplicity: Consumption-based pricing provides cost predictability and eliminates over-provisioning. The DMaaS solution also removes equipment procurement headaches and reduces operating expenses and administrative overhead.
  • Sophisticated cloud-based services that derive additional value from data: Once on AWS, customers can also easily take advantage of cloud-based services provided by AWS. Customers can use these services to help ensure compliance, enhance security, and extract additional insights and business intelligence through ML and analytics.

 

Providing Greater Choice for Today’s Modern Businesses

The DMaaS solution builds on Cohesity’s existing data management offerings that, according to a recent Forrester Consulting study entitled “The Total Economic Impact™ Of Cohesity,” enabled customers to realize a 66 percent reduction of backup and data management costs, save thousands of hours on planned downtime work, and realize a three-year return on investment of 150 percent.*

 

With DMaaS, Cohesity is now providing customers with an even broader set of options to choose from when managing their data. Customers can manage data infrastructure themselves — in the data center, at the edge, or in the cloud. They can also utilize this DMaaS solution where associated infrastructure is managed for them, or they can use a hybrid combination of both.

 

“Most customers prefer choice in how their data is managed,” said Graff from Dolby. “With some vendors you are forced to choose either-or, but with Cohesity, you have the flexibility to manage data your way.”

 

“This DMaaS solution aligns with our managed cloud strategy and helps accelerate our build-out of data management offerings in the public cloud,” said Larik-Jan Verschuren-Parchomov, Co-founder and CTO, Fundaments, a leading managed service provider in Europe. “It’s great to see Cohesity thinking about service providers straight out of the gate with this offering so we can better deliver turnkey data management services such as backup and disaster recovery to our customers globally.”

 

The first offer that will be made available to organizations as part of this DMaaS solution is Cohesity DataProtect delivered as a service. This Backup as a Service (BaaS) offering is currently in early access preview with general availability planned by the end of the year. Customers interested in getting early access can join the interest list here. Other DMaaS offers addressing additional data management needs will follow in the coming quarters.

 

For more information

  • Join the wait list for early access to our Backup as a Service offering
  • Watch the webcast “Modern Data Management for the Cloud Era” for more details from Cohesity and AWS on the DMaaS Solution
  • Read the Forrester Consulting study entitled “The Total Economic Impact™ Of Cohesity”

 

*Source: Data points delivered in the commissioned study, The Total Economic Impact™ Of Cohesity, conducted by Forrester Consulting, August, 2020.

Cloud Migration, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, News, Tech Thought Leadership

Disaster Recovery vs. Cloud Backup. What is the difference?

Written by Sarah Doherty, Product Marketing Manager, iland

Data loss and security breaches are becoming increasingly common events in the today’s world. It is not a matter of when, but if a disaster of any kind will happen.  All of an organisation’s information must be protected and readily available at all times in order for a business to survive. Considering this fact, the importance of backups cannot be overestimated. However, while backing up vital data is an integral part of any business’s IT strategy, having backups is not the same as having a disaster recovery plan.  Differentiating backup from disaster recovery can help you develop effective strategies for avoiding the consequences of downtime and business disruptions.

 

Understanding the basics of backup and disaster recovery is critical for minimising the impact of unplanned downtime on your business. Across all industries, organisations recognise that downtime can quickly result in lost sales and revenue, interrupted service, possible supply chain disruptions and loss of reputation due to bad press about an outage. Unfortunately, natural disasters, human error, security breaches and ransomware attacks can all jeopardise the availability of IT resources. Any downtime can disrupt customer interactions, employee productivity, destroy data and freeze business processes.

 

What is backup and disaster recovery?

There’s an important distinction between backup and disaster recovery. Backup is the process of making an extra copy (or multiple copies) of data. You back up data to protect it. You might need to restore backup data if you encounter an accidental deletion, database corruption, or problem with a software upgrade.  It is important to have a backup solution in place. Backup protects your data in case of theft (a single laptop to office break-ins), employee accidents (deletion of an important file), or a technical issue (crashed hard drive). With this protection, you can access a copy of your data and restore it easily.

 

Disaster recovery, on the other hand, refers to the plan and processes for quickly reestablishing access to applications, data, and IT resources after an outage. That plan might involve switching over to a redundant set of servers and storage systems until your primary data center is functional again.  Don’t get caught up on the term “disaster” and believe it has to be a major incident. A disaster can be your entire network crashes and your employees can no longer work for the day (or longer). With a disaster recovery plan, your employees can continue to work by using the mirrored system. With your employees set, your IT works on fixing the problem with the original network.  Having an inadequate DR plan can negatively impact your organisation leading to interrupted service, lost sales and revenue, high costs, potential supply chain disruptions along with possible loss of reputation due to the bad press around an outage.

 

Some organisations mistake backup for disaster recovery. But as they may discover after a serious outage, simply having copies of data doesn’t mean you can keep your business running. To ensure business continuity, you need a robust, tested disaster recovery plan.

 

What are the key differences between Backup and Disaster Recovery?  

If backup and disaster recovery are compared, there are several distinct differences that exist between the two:

 

  • Different Purposes. Backups work best when you need to gain access to a lost or damaged file or object, such as an e-mail or a PowerPoint presentation. Backups are often used for long-term data archival, or for purposes such as data retention. However, if you want your business to quickly restore its functions after some unforeseen event, you should opt for disaster recovery. With both the DR site and DR solution in place, you can simply perform failover to transfer workloads to the VM replicas at the DR location, and your business can continue to function as normal even if the production site is unavailable.
  • Distinct RTO and RPO. Setting up Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is crucial for any business. Backups have longer RTOs and RPOs and thus are not suitable for business-critical data that you need quickly restored after a disaster. Disaster recovery, on the other hand, implies replicating your critical VMs with the aim of quickly performing failover if necessary, which means that DR can accommodate much shorter RTOs and RPOs.
  • Resource Allocation. Backups are usually stored in a compressed state and do not require much attention or storage space. Disaster recovery, on the other hand, requires a separate site with fully operational IT infrastructure that should always be ready for possible failover at any time.
  • Comprehensive planning. The backup process is rarely complicated: an organisation simply needs to create and stick to their Recovery Point Objectives as well as requirements for data retention. With disaster recovery, things immediately become more complicated. Besides the need for the additional resources, a business needs to evaluate the importance of business applications and prioritise the recovery order of the VMs running such applications.

 

Your organisation cannot afford to neglect backup or disaster recovery. If it takes hours to retrieve lost data after an accidental deletion, your employees, customers or partners will not have access to vital data prohibiting them from completing business critical processes that rely on your technology. And if it takes days to get your business back online after a disaster, you may permanently lose customers and business revenue.  Given the amount of time and money you could lose in both cases, investments in backup and disaster recovery are completely justified.

Don’t wait for disaster to happen.  For most organisations, backup and disaster recovery strategies are absolutely critical to maintain the future of the business.  Organisations must address IT recovery by creating a comprehensive solution that encompasses people, process and technology.   iland Secure Cloud solutions can help you evaluate and update your strategies, which can help you control complexity and cost.  Backup and disaster recovery plans can help only if they are designed, deployed and tested long before they are needed.  iland offers cost effective, scalable and secure cloud backup and disaster recovery as a service for all of your business essential data.

 

Cloud Migration, News

How COVID-19 has accelerated the move from a ‘cloud first’ to a ‘cloud now’ approach

Justin Augat, VP Product Marketing, iland, considers how COVID-19 has impacted the progress of cloud migration

Recent market data from Synergy Research Group via CRN suggests 2019 was a milestone for IT and that for the first time ever, enterprises are spending more money annually on cloud infrastructure services than on data centre hardware and software.  For example, total spend on cloud infrastructure services reached $97 billion, up 38 percent year over year, whereas total spend on data centre hardware and software hit $93 billion in 2019, an increase of only 1 percent compared to 2018.

This means that many companies that have historically owned, maintained, and managed their own IT operations in their own data centre are now evolving how they support their business operations by transforming their IT to cloud.

Moreover, the cloud continues to be the foundation upon which most organisations’ digital transformation efforts are built, with more than eight out of ten businesses considering the cloud to be either important or crucial to their digital strategies.

What are the key reasons underpinning this shift to cloud? Much of it is based on the modern organisation’s need for greater agility and flexibility. There has never been a better example of this demand than demonstrated during this COVID-19 pandemic, as companies have hastily decamped employees to home working.

Likewise, employees today want the ability to work from anywhere and to collaborate with colleagues as easily as they would in person. Even before COVID-19 led to a new remote workforce springing up almost overnight, a growing number of business leaders understood the importance of flexible working. Globally, 50 percent of employees work outside of their main office headquarters for at least 2.5 days a week, with 85 percent saying that productivity has increased in their business as a result of greater flexibility. In addition, more than 16 percent of companies worldwide now only hire remote teams. The cloud enables this freedom to work remotely.

However, until recently organisations have historically looked at only new application development and deployment for cloud, taking a ‘cloud first’ approach. But now, accelerated by the demands of the modern workforce combined with the ongoing effects of COVID-19, many are pivoting towards a ‘cloud now’ approach. In the months and years to come we will see more organisations embracing agile working and digital technologies, now they have seen a cloud-enabled workforce in action.

What do we mean when we talk about ‘cloud now’?

It means that companies are now looking at cloud for more than just new applications, they are considering cloud for all their applications, including existing ones.

The reason for this is straightforward: companies are focused on reducing costs and eliminating the dependency on the physical data centre is a logical next step in the continuation of this long-term trend. For as long as customers have been buying technology to support business, they have been using it to reduce costs and speed up time-to-market inside the data centre. Technology capabilities including server and storage virtualisation have improved IT’s ability to respond quickly to lines of business. But, over time, the ability of new technology to further reduce costs and time-to-market is diminishing.

This is a result of the growing customer demand for more application resources, better performance, and increasing frequency of administrative tasks such as patching various components, and planning for end of life or performance upgrades. Likewise, as mentioned earlier, with a global and increasingly remote workforce needing access to their applications from anywhere, this is also fuelling demand. As businesses have reached this inflexion point of diminishing returns, they have turned their strategy to the cloud as the next frontier of IT efficiency, leaving the data centre firmly behind in pursuit of their ‘cloud now’ strategy.

But today there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cloud services available to organisations. In many cases, the capabilities of the service, adjusted for cost, are what matter most to the decision makers versus the infrastructure itself. As an example, the underlying infrastructure that supports common business software such as Salesforce, Microsoft Office 365, is rarely scrutinised, as the products are trusted solely based on the brand’s reputation.

But in the case of organisations moving their existing applications to the cloud for production hosting (IaaS), backup (backup as a service) or Disaster Recovery (DRaaS) the underlying platform must be vetted to ensure the application needs will be met. To do this, organisations must examine the capabilities at the platform level. This is where the technology resources that have been purchased come together to deliver the application performance, security, compliance and connectivity, and more, of the selected service. Ultimately, it is these consumed resources that directly impact the cost of the service.

In general, the main cloud platform types that are most popular and available to customers at scale are public cloud, private cloud, and bare-metal cloud. They all have their merits and downsides and choosing the right cloud will very much depend on the customer’s requirements, as different aspects of these multitude of cloud products will best meet particular application and organisational needs.

Ultimately, as more customers embrace the cloud for more of their workloads, the varying requirements of these workloads can lead to trade-offs in cost versus performance, which defeats businesses’ main objectives when moving out of the data centre and into the cloud. As a result, customers need to understand a cloud provider’s overall capabilities early to avoid missed expectations in the future as it is clear that not all IaaS providers are the same.

So, as organisations embark on their ‘cloud now’ approach, they should undertake due diligence upfront to thoroughly consider their own requirements and what type of cloud IaaS provider will best meet their needs both now and in the years to come. Without a doubt we will see more organisations embracing agile working and digital technologies, now that they’ve witnessed a cloud-enabled workforce in action during COVID-19.