Security, Sustainability & Scalability – Conquering All Clouds

“Vision without action is a daydream.

Action without vision is a nightmare.” - Japanese Proverb

It is a truism that strategy without execution becomes meaningless and today enterprises are trying to embed more dimensions into their strategic prioritisations, and at a speed and scale we have not seen before, especially around the 3 Pillars of Security, Sustainability and Scalability of change. And this all underpinned by the imperative to build enhanced capacity to be more agile and better measure ‘return on impact’ rather than just return on investment. This is key to enabling the actualisation of shared value business, one that consumers, employees and ecosystem partners alike are increasingly not just expecting, but demanding!

Recent research consistently shows that this quest to do more, but often with the same or less resources, is a key challenge today - from increased complexity, data overload and optimising investment in the acceleration of cloud adoption - right through to navigating talent shortages, baking in sustainability and DEI practices by design, and the sheer multitude of change vectors at play, which is especially placing pressure on the ever more squeezed middle manager. So how can we address this better and turn challenge to opportunity? 

This was the ethos that for me permeated the recent Conquer Every Cloud event by Veritas Technologies where global acting icon Simu Liu, winner of the inspirational Game Changer Award took on another dynamic role – that of IT super hero! And this very ethos was exemplified by the power of partnership, trust and resiliency which permeated the event discussions, especially in addressing rising cybersecurity threats such as ransomware. As Doug Matthews VP Product Management stated: ‘We’ve got your back’. Let’s explore some of these challenges and the support available to negate them in more detail. 

Multi Cloud Optimisation and Autonomous Data Management

The latest research consistently reflects between 89% (Flexera) to 94% (Vanson Bourne) of enterprises employing a multi-cloud strategy with 60% of CIO’s (Accenture) stating that optimising their cloud spend is a leading priority, with a typical wasted cloud spend of some 32% (Flexera). With Veritas Technologies just named one of the 20 Coolest Data Management Companies in The 2022 Storage 100 by CRN, it is no surprise to see them address this issue head on. 

Specifically, the launch of a new subscription-based pricing model will help organisations improve their cloud cost predictability and cloud resource usage visibility, with benefits for consumption efficiency too - helping to embed ESG considerations alongside cost, an excellent example of shared value business in action. This helps meet the needs of today’s increasingly conscious consumers and ecosystem partners, whilst helping address businesses’ key issues in meeting them, as exemplified by two salient data points in this new research by Oracle.  

- ‘70% of people claim to be willing to cancel their relationship with a brand that does not take sustainability and social initiatives seriously’  

- Leading challenges for business include obtaining ESG metrics from partners and third parties (35%); the lack of data (33%); and the time-consuming manual reporting processes (32%)

Further still, by harnessing AI and hyper-automation, Veritas Autonomous Data Management reduces manual processes and provides intelligent automation points that help ensure predictability and reliability, maximizing uptime, lowering IT management software costs, and reducing the consumption of IT, storage and compute resources. This reflects a wider vision to ‘go far beyond human capacity without sacrificing human oversight’ whereby technology can seamlessly provision, optimise and repair data management services automatically. This enables self-service data protection and recovery that empowers end-users and affords the actualisation of human-machine complementary partnership, with employees, especially in IT, freed up to focus on higher order value activities around strategic transformation - and benefiting from a superior experience too!

Where Agility and Security Combine

Cyber Security attacks are more pervasive than ever, with multiple drivers coming to the fore over the last year including the rise in the value of data, the IoT device explosion and growth of the API economy, an acceleration in multi-cloud adoption and cloud-native applications, increased technology and IT/OT convergence, and the rise of hybrid decentralised working and Bring/Choose Your Own Device. In combination, cyber threats have fast become more complex, converged and sophisticated. Examples include bad actor collaboration, Supply Chain, IoT and Small Medium Business vulnerabilities, device hacking, phishing, attacks right across the DoS DDoS, SaaS platform, MitM and Log4j spectrum and notably the rising risk of ransomware, with an event now projected to occur every 11 seconds during 2022.

Indeed, the multi-layered range of factors that organizations must plan and manage for Cyber Security, from end-user training, to OS patching, to isolating, locking, and hardening data from changes, can typically increase the complexity and risks for cyber-attacks if not fully integrated with full visibility and a single view of data plane. Embedding Zero Trust practices is also key but equally a subject that causes confusion as I discussed on a recent Veritas LinkedIn Live. None of these considerations are once and done, they must be part of everyday organisational life and embedded across technology, culture, processes and skills. 

Helping to bring many of these ‘challenge’ elements together, the recent announcement of the general availability of the Data Management Solution NetBackup 10 with Cloud Scale Technology first introduced by Brian Hamel, Veritas EVP at Conquer Every Cloud really resonates. This heralds a new generation of NetBackup architecture which enables more efficient operations within modern multi-cloud environments comprising containerized services, AI/ML and a range of dynamic features.

Indeed this is a milestone moment, bringing to broad market availability the industry's first data protection solution that is optimized for any cloud and at any scale, combining automation, AI, and an elastic architecture that enhances agility, flexibility and data security too. Additionally, this innovation can support the acceleration in adoption of cloud use cases and new virtualization technologies - from SME to Enterprise alike. This is further supported by the capabilities of Recovery Vault, the cloud-based data storage that is inherently integrated within NetBackup. 

‘No matter where our customers put their data, if it's managed by NetBackup it's protected and recoverable, to anywhere, from anywhere, no matter the threat’

Doug Matthews, Senior Vice President of Product Management, Veritas Technologies

Further Information

To explore some of security, sustainability and scalability solutions described in this piece in more detail, further information is available! To find all the new features of NetBackup 10 with Cloud Scale Technology, please check out the following link. Additionally, Conquer Every Cloud event highlights are available on demand where you can learn more about the present-day and future cloud landscape, explore data protection and resiliency best practices in depth, and of course deep-dive into emerging innovations too! And finally, a heads up about the upcoming Solution Day on Thursday 5th May, with all the details here.

About the Author

Dr. Sally Eaves is a highly experienced Chief Technology Officer by background, Professor in Advanced Technologies, and a Global Strategic Advisor on Digital Transformation specializing in the application of emergent technologies, notably AI, 5G, Cloud, Security, and IoT disciplines, for Business and IT transformation, alongside Social Impact at scale.

An international Keynote Speaker and Author, Sally was an inaugural recipient of the Frontier Technology and Social Impact award, presented at the United Nations, and has been described as the "torchbearer for ethical tech", founding Aspirational Futures to enhance inclusion, diversity, and belonging in the technology space and beyond. Sally is also the chair for Global Cyber Trust at leading think tank GFCYBER.