Gone are the days of managing backups just for recovery. Backups are valuable corporate assets that should serve many uses such as software testing, app development, compliance verification, threat detection, lost file recovery, archiving and, oh yes, disaster recovery.
But, are your customers protected?
Without intelligent automation you can choke on the process. You cannot depend on old, ad hoc, manual processes as the challenge of administering larger and larger volumes of data continues to increase faster than the IT resources charged with managing it.
The Challenges:
1.Keeping too Much Data
Keeping everything forever is most people’s idea of data management. However, keeping everything forever can get expensive, complex and manually intensive. Let’s analyze your customers’ scenarios!
2. Keeping too Little Data
Data is precious. Backups are the primary source of files that can be used for a wide variety of business processes. Without the right files you put these programs at risk:
- Ransomware
- Lost file recovery
- Compliance audit
3. Keeping Data for too Long
Different types of data have different lifecycles. Treating all files with the same life cycle and storage strategy ensures you will drown in unnecessary data with no business use.
4. Not Keeping Data Long Enough
While your industry may not have the same amount of critical information as other industries may have, your organization has data that needs to be kept for very long periods of time. Many of these requirements are defined in industry mandates such as HIPAA, the 2006 European Data Retention Directive, and IRS tax laws.
5. Recovery
Your number one job is always going to be ensuring fast recovery from downtime, right? There needs to be regular and comprehensive testing programs to ensure recovery can happen within corporately mandated RTO and RPO goals. Unitrends can provide you with new tools designed to manage backups as part of a comprehensive data management solution. Are your customers prepared?
Choosing Unitrends
The right backup appliance is the foundation of a solid data management process. Innovative backup appliances can automate backup creation, replication, storage, recovery, and destruction based on the type of data, not using a one-size fits all process.
The Benefits of Partnering with Unitrends
- Automation
Today’s backup appliances minimize the time and efforts required to optimize a data management strategy by delivering business policy automation. Separate creation, replication and management procedures can be set based on each individual VM or server. Since all data is managed differently, do you know how you should be managing your customers’ data?
- Immediate Accessibility
Archives should no longer be housed in inaccessible cold storage. That data has value and needs to be easily accessed when required! New deduplication technologies can greatly decrease the size of files and larger drives allowing you to keep more files on the backup devices. Smart backup tools can automatically run to ensure recovery is possible when those data elements are needed. Are you ready to automate the process for your customers?
- Centralize Management
It is more effective to administer a data management strategy centrally rather than trust remote employees to follow a complex set of rules and regulations. The newest backup appliances enable a central device to manage any or all remote locations as easily as if they were on site. This ensures a consistent program covering all locations, even those where no IT resources may be located.
- Analytics / Machine Learning
Did you know that new analytic and machine learning capabilities can enhance data utilization and ensure the backup appliances perform at peak efficiency? Today’s IT resilient backup solutions actively inspect every file during every backup for ransomware infections. Upon detection, the solution will automatically notify administrators through email and notices on their dashboard, so recovery can begin immediately. Are your customers using these enhanced capabilities?
- Data Management “As-a-Service”
It may be cheaper and more effective to outsource the archiving process and location. Partners are available who can follow your program and ensure files are stored and protected at remote locations or in the cloud. An archival cloud can provide safe, trustworthy and easily-recoverable storage. Remove the burden of retention management and operating spending as remote cloud storage may be cheaper than managing your own physical backup media. Contact us to learn more.
As the industry shifts from just managing backups to managing data, IT has new options to assist the process. Smarter backup appliances can relieve much of the manual process and ensure business-critical data is preserved and recoverable when needed. If you’re ready to learn more about disaster recovery contact us today!
To download the full whitepaper, click here.
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