Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 56 | Page 40

FEATURE: DISASTER RECOVERY AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY A new report from Veeam reveals how many organisations are not sufficiently prepared for effective data protection and management. This points to an urgent need to modernise data protection and focus on Business Continuity to enable Digital Transformation. As organisations look to transform their business operations and revolutionise customer service, Digital Transformation (DX) is at the top of most CXO’s agendas; in fact, DX spending is expected to approach US$7.4 trillion between 2020 and 2023, a CAGR of 17.5%. However, according to the latest industry data released from Veeam Software, a leader in backup solutions that deliver Cloud Data Management, almost half of global organisations are being hindered in their DX journeys due to unreliable, legacy technologies with 44% citing lack of IT skills or expertise as another barrier to success. Moreover, almost every company admitted to experiencing downtime, with one out of every 10 servers having unexpected outages each year – problems that last for hours and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars – and this points to an urgent need to modernise data protection and focus on Business Continuity to enable DX. The Veeam 2020 Data Protection Trends Report surveyed more than 1,500 global enterprises to understand their approach toward data protection and management and how they expect to be prepared for the IT challenges they face, including reacting to demand changes and interruptions in service, as well as more aspirational goals of IT modernisation and DX. “Technology is constantly moving forward, continually changing and transforming how we do business – especially in these current times as we’re all working in new ways. Due to DX, it’s important to always look at the ever-changing IT landscape to see where businesses stand on their solutions, challenges and goals,” said Danny Allan, CTO and SVP of Product Strategy at Veeam. “It’s great to see the global drive to embrace technology to deliver a richer user experience, however the Achilles Heel still seems to be how to protect and manage data across the hybrid cloud. Data protection must move beyond outdated legacy solutions to a higher state of intelligence and be able to anticipate needs and meet evolving demands. Based on our data, unless business leaders recognise that – and act on it – real transformation just won’t happen.” The criticality of data protection and availability Respondents stated that data delivered through IT has become the heart and soul of most organisations, so it should not be a surprise how important ‘data protection’ has become within IT teams, including not VEEAM REPORT Reveals need to modernise data protection 40 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com