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backup their data via a Backup as a Service
(BaaS) provider. Slightly fewer, 27%, of
organisations in Africa and the Middle East
use self-back up on-prem, while 26% conduct
self-managed backup using cloud services.
Businesses should be free to choose where to
go and what to do, but no matter what you
do, protect all data, all the time, no matter
where it is. In essence, go free but have a
backup. Modernisation of your backup means
that you are able to protect all workloads, no
matter the location, while reliably automating
core backup and recovery abilities, like
automatic backup testing which is one of
the elements needed for compliance. It also
means that the backup is in a portable format
that can easily be transformed into the
Trent Odgers, Cloud Manager, South
Africa, Veeam
required format needed at the next location,
thus reducing the time to migrate workloads.
If you are, in real-time, able to intelligently
discover and remediate common issues you
then have all the tools in place for modern
application delivery and deployment.
Hybrid cloud acceleration
A simple Google search will find many
thousands of articles on the cloud. However,
these articles are not in the past tense –
people are still wanting to go to the cloud.
However, in Africa particularly, volatile
exchange rates make pricing of services
more sensitive.
Organisations are moving into and out
of the cloud. There is no one-size fits all
cloud strategy. Most organisations have
moved specific workloads to the cloud, like
collaboration tools. Some organisations use
the cloud to accelerate their DevOps and
then move applications on-premises, while
others develop on-premises and move to the
cloud. This strategy also assists businesses to
migrate specific workloads to cloud, as with
Veeam, you can use a backup copy which
doesn’t impact production and that gives
the organisation time to test all the elements
before switching the on-premises workload
to a local or public cloud provider.
The reality is that businesses need to have a
hybrid cloud strategy. The challenge with this
is that the pace at which business wants to
utilise the cloud is being limited by the tools
and capabilities they currently have. They
need to go to the cloud and come back in
the same form as they started.
It is apparent, therefore, that a fundamental
capability in any DX strategy needs to be
an acceleration towards hybrid cloud, with
seamless cloud backup and restore with
data continuity and availability across
various environments, and this needs to be
managed in a simple, flexible and reliable
way from a unified platform.
Data security
Businesses are more reliant on digital
infrastructure than ever before, with many
organisations completely dependent on
their IT systems. Data security has grown in
importance, but also complexity and cannot
be an afterthought.
Organisations need to have a reliable
and robust data strategy that focuses
on the failure scenarios that they have
already faced, or likely scenarios, such
as ransomware. All applications and
workload updates need to be safeguarded
before deploying.
Beyond the operational implications, the
regulatory and compliance obligations of
the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) and South Africa’s Protection of
Personal Information Act (POPIA) mean that
any organisation could face severe financial
or reputational damage if they don’t meet
these guidelines. Even when restoring, data
privacy and compliance guidelines need to
be built into every process.
1–2–3 and accelerate
And at the crux of it, something as complex
and previously frightening as DX becomes
easy to envisage, manage and scale.
When you are able you get the three
elements of backup modernisation, hybrid
cloud strategy and data security running
like clockwork with your organisation in
the middle managing all the touchpoints
seamlessly, your business’s DX strategy is
vastly accelerated. •
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