Business Threats Force IT Leaders To Re-Envision Data Availability Strategies

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Arcserve provides new strategies for optimizing response to unplanned downtime.

Business threats are forcing IT leaders to re-envision their data availability strategies, according to an Arcserve report. Responding to Downtime: Five Key Strategies to Know Now” provides new strategies to help organizations prepare for and respond during unplanned downtime, explores the shifting data protection and availability landscape, and outlines the areas with which organizations need to focus to achieve system resiliency.

According to Arcserve, today’s businesses are weathering a “perfect storm” of data protection-related challenges that create serious obstacles for IT teams who are trying to effectively run operations, and place economic decision makers determining how they should allocate and manage resources in a precarious position.

Among the top challenges are quantifying the level of risk and loss expectancy, the exponential increase in ransomware attacks, lack of control over key metrics, and questions about how to leverage the cloud, all combining to create an opportunity for organizations to re-assess their ability to cost-effectively respond to unplanned downtime.

“The new challenges hitting IT teams are certainly cause for concern,” said Christophe Bertrand, vice president of Product Marketing for Arcserve. “Organizations that implement strategies around risk mitigation, proactive ransomware response, data availability for system ecospheres, processes simplification, and the role of cloud, will be well positioned to meet any business demand.”

To compound these challenges, many organizations are also placing responsibility for many of these complex IT tasks on the shoulders of an IT generalist, many of whom are looking for simpler and lower cost solutions to protect, manage, and access critical data using these five key strategies:

1. Risk Management: where actuarial strategy meets data protection. As the report explains, “Every time an IT leader improves the resiliency of the IT infrastructure, the business realizes cost savings, a significant reduction in risk/loss, and improves operational efficiency.”
2. System availability: Not all data is created equal. By determining your data availability index and any potential gaps in the workflow or value chain of applications that run your business, you can adjust accordingly for optimal efficiency.
3. Complexity: More processes, more problems. As the report asserts, “The challenge, and subsequent main goal, is to obtain a level of predictability and consistency of recovery, regardless of the interruption event that will inevitably hit every infrastructure. IT leaders and business executives need to approach this challenge from a net result perspective; considering actual RPOs and RTOs, and determining how to get the business back on its feet in a timeframe that meets business requirements.”
4. Ransomware: It’s not a security issue; it’s a data recovery issue. As the report explains, “The best strategy to mitigate the damage from a ransomware event is to be proactive, instead of reactive. By giving your organization room to make its own decisions, you remove the need to negotiate with hackers,” a goal that can be accomplished by implementing and regularly testing a robust recovery solution with traditional and cloud-based options that enable you to restore business-sensitive data without paying the ransom.
5. Leveraging the Cloud: How and when it makes sense for your infrastructure. It and business leaders need to assess their own needs before committing to a cloud solution.