The amount of data that businesses create continues to grow; at the same time, more of it is slipping out of our central data centres and into a mix of Cloud applications, mobile endpoints and remote or branch office file servers. But how can companies keep track of all this data when it is not in one place or even one type of location? The answer lies in taking a “Cloud First” approach to IT.
Taking a “Cloud First” approach to IT doesn’t mean simply lifting everything into public Cloud services like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure then trying to maintain existing management processes. Instead, it requires a new mindset around how to make the most of Cloud architectures while still meeting compliance and security goals.
According to research by industry analysts, around 40 per cent of all corporate data is outside the data centre at the moment. Gartner predicts that this percentage will grow to more than 50 per cent of all data by 2020. This trend is an interesting one, as companies want to take advantage of the flexibility that mobile working and cloud-based services can deliver.
However, IT can’t afford to lose all control. Regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation put together by the European Union forces all companies to keep control over customer records or risk heavy fines. For companies with operations in multiple countries, different standards of data privacy can make it difficult to ensure that all necessary steps around data protection are followed.
The shift to Cloud has led to the growth of more management controls around how and where data can be created, in order to keep pace with business needs for governance. Whereas this started as a way to build trust in the Cloud, today this has begun to take over more of the management requirements across all the places where data might exist across all business IT assets.
As IT becomes more fractured across internal services, external IT assets and third party providers, it’s important to look at how to keep a consistent approach to data management in place. This includes looking at how to consolidate management requirements while ensuring that all data is handled appropriately.
The availability of information means that finding a common platform internally can be very challenging, if not impossible. As applications move to the Cloud, the data they produce tends to follow. Similarly, the devices used to consume data from Cloud applications can be more mobile, making it even more difficult to use internal infrastructure as a platform for data protection.
Secondary storage requirements will tend to follow where applications and service move.
