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TALKING
business
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WWhy is constant data availability so
crucial for modern organisations?
Data is the lifeblood of any modern
organisation. It provides the foundation
for understanding where a business is
positioned and is essential to analysing
customer behaviour, navigating markets
and assessing a business’ performance.
Many successful business leaders are
dependent on the insight provided by data
to make informed decisions about the
business’ future.
If the data is breached, subject to a
ransomware attack or unavailable for a given
period of time, it can prove catastrophic to
a business. Lack of access to critical data
can lead to malfunctions across the entire
business, from significant revenue loss as
a result of system downtime, to remote
workers being unable to access shared files.
Unquestionably, the constant availability of
data is fundamental to the longevity and
success of any modern organisation.
What is driving the need for
businesses to re-assess data
protection strategies?
Companies are generating oceans of data –
and not all of that data is equally important
to their function. Organisations that know
this and know which pieces of data are more
critical to their success than others will be in a
position to better manage their storage and
better leverage their data. Think about it.
As organisations deal with a data deluge,
they are trying hard to maximise their storage
pools. As a result, they can inadvertently end
up putting critical data on less critical servers.
Doing so is a problem, because it typically
takes longer to access slower, secondary
machines and leverage that critical data. It’s
this lack of speed and agility that can have a
detrimental impact on business.
Traditionally, organisations take a serverbased
approach to their data backup and
recovery deployments. Their priority is to back
up their most critical machines rather than
focusing on their most business-critical data.
So rather than having backup and recovery
policies based on the criticality of each
server, we will start to see organisations
match their most critical servers with their
Florian Malecki, International Product
Marketing Senior Director of StorageCraft
“
IF CUSTOMER
DATA IS STOLEN,
CLIENTS WILL
LOSE TRUST IN
THE BUSINESS
AND MAY LOOK TO
COMPETITORS.
most important data. In essence, the actual
content of the data will become more of a
decision-driver from a backup point of view.
The most successful companies in the digital
economy will be those that implement
storage policies based not on their server
hierarchy, but the value of their data.
What are the implications for
organisations which do not employ
robust data protection schemes?
Organisations that fail to implement a robust
data protection scheme put themselves at
serious risk of suffering a data breach and
causing potentially fatal damage to the
business. When it comes to system downtime,
businesses risk both reputational damage and
the cost associated with downtime.
If customer data is stolen, clients will lose
trust in the business and may look to
competitors. In addition, if employees aren’t
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