Today’s enterprises have gold mines of data sitting around collecting dust. This might sound surprising because studies show that companies of all sizes and scopes consider data a critical component of their digital transformations (DX). After all, the more companies learn about their customers, competitors, markets and own internal operations, the more they should be able to apply those insights to DX initiatives.
However, data reuse, broadly defined, isn’t generating the impact that it could. While data volumes keep growing, companies aren’t taking advantage of the data they’ve already stored when they have to make decisions about how to transform their operations. They’re going mainly on gut instinct. To connect with customers in more meaningful ways and deliver maximum value to the bottom line, organizations need to do a better job unleashing the data they’ve gathered and stored in backup systems.
Unleashing data requires a series of skillful hand-offs in the third phase of a long process, and the first two phases — protecting and managing the data — take a lot of work. Companies start by collecting their data and protecting it with snapshots, backups, replication and long-term retention. The next stage is to position the data as more than just an insurance policy, turning it into an asset that’s fully integrated into the organization. This can be achieved through integrations, data services, governance, data migration, policy-based automation and orchestration, and the ability to copy data for reuse. The final phase culls the data for insights to do things like improve customer experience, enable new products and services, or improve customer intimacy.
Companies are motivated to take the next step. According to a report published by IDC, spending on DX initiatives is growing by 17.5% a year and is expected to hit $7.4 trillion by 2023. The problem is that according to a recent Veeam survey, almost half of all global organizations’ DX journeys are being held back by unreliable legacy data protection technologies. Data isn’t just in data centers anymore. It’s spread all over the place — in data centers, in the cloud and in shared storage systems. Legacy tools designed to back up files and applications on premises can’t handle the data requirements in today’s hybrid and multicloud world. These tools are also inefficient, and they’re putting companies’ data at risk.
Reusing production data that’s stored in backups and replicas is an effective way to make better decisions about your business. Information in these backups can be used to classify data, scan for security threats or accelerate the delivery of new business services. If this expertise is not internally available, you can provide copies of your backup data access to third-party experts to scout out patterns or discover anomalies that generate valuable insights.
