Moving from digital era to Data Age

Factoring in the time, money and return on investment realized in moving backup and archive to the cloud—for virtually all business—the process of backup is now a strategic advantage, feels Sameer Bhatia, Director of Asia Pacific Consumer Business Group and Country Manager for SAARC & India, Seagate Technology.

Data is the heart of digital transformation. Today, companies are leveraging data to improve customer experiences, open new markets, make employees and processes more productive, and create new sources of competitive advantage—working toward the future of tomorrow. In a report sponsored by Seagate, IDC found this digital transformation will generate data that will grow to 175 zettabytes by the year 2025. That’s more than a tenfold increase from the 2016 levels of 16ZB. IDC calls the current era the Data Age, where everything we do is fundamentally changed by the advent of autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots, smart homes, and smart factories—and the data they bring into being.

Expansion of datasphere

Data is generated at three key locations where content is actively created by individuals and organizations. First, the core (traditional and cloud datacenters), second is the edge (enterprise-hardened infrastructure like cell towers and branch offices), and third, the endpoints (PCs, smart phones, and IoT devices). This data created is propelling the tremendous global datasphere expansion and therefore, stemming the demand for data storage. IDC forecasts that over 22 ZB of storage capacity must ship across all media types from 2018 to 2025, to keep up the storage demands.

Data storage trends

Data storage has evolved to the next stage ever since Industry 4.0 revolution disrupted the way we use data. By 2021, there will be more data stored in the public cloud than in traditional datacenters as per IDC. Given the unpredictable data explosion from various sources, storage industry is looking at demands from both consumers as well as enterprises. The continued growth of applications and services means that the volume of media devices (hard disk drives, flash drives, SSD) for storage will grow. As software-defined everything (SDx) enables IT teams to scale up operations in the most cost effective way, more and more businesses move from client/server model to a mobile/cloud world. This means, we are looking at demand for mass capacity storage devices of up to 20TB being deployed in the cloud. For example, simple tasks like expense tracking for business travel used to be tracked in spreadsheets. Now they’re handled with a mobile app that captures pictures of receipts; that data lives in the cloud.

Back up to stay secure

As businesses are migrating to digital transformation and deploying new-age technologies such as AI powered applications and cloud services for their customers at a rapid pace, the data protection, storage and recovery landscape is undergoing a paradigm shift. Due to this shift, large amount of data is being generated. It is a perfect time to start thinking about how to protect all your data. In the past few months, backing up to store data has gained supreme importance as globally information is being exchanged online and there is more data in circulation than we ever imagined before. The accelerated digitalization, driven by unprecedented circumstances, has made organizations and individuals to save data securely and maintain proper backup to enable recovery in case of an unforeseen technology disaster.

On March 31st every year, we acknowledge World Backup Day to emphasize the significance of preserving data and according to the organizers of World Backup Day—almost 30 percent of us have never backed up our data! Because we carry our devices (the endpoints of data creation) with us almost everywhere and all the time, the chances of losing valuable information are higher.

Two basic tips that can help everyone to back up their data effectively would be:

Be Prepared—Being aware of potential vulnerabilities and staying prepared is the key to recovery from any disaster that might happen when it comes to your critical data. Plan and schedule back up regularly from devices as well social networks. Businesses have a pre-scheduled data backup system to ensure storage on cloud, data centres for faster recovery.

Be Organized—It is a great way to store, use and manage data across devices and networks. Cleaning up irrelevant content, freeing up space, maintaining data by regularly backing up helps save the panic when an uncertainty hits. Organizing content in files, folders and drives keeps the data securely stored for a longer time.

Choose the right drive

Once, the preparation and data organization is done, the next step is to understand the storage need and choose a device that fits. Here are some tips that may help in choosing the right drive:

Easy access—In case you are a movie fanatic, music lover, photographer or a blogger and you prefer carrying your content with you, storing on a portable drive could be a great option. The accessibility it offers on-the-go, anytime is what makes a portable drive suitable for backing up such data. However, knowing which content is needed all the time is integral to segregate and store old assets on the cloud or a backup drive and make room for the data assets you need daily.

Think capacity—Take stock of your data. Whether you data is just small files and folders or multimedia content which needs more storage space will be the differentiator for your storage requirement in choosing the right drive. If you’ve got a smaller amount to store, a mobile drive with 1-2TB of storage would likely be sufficient but if you have tons of media assets, then a higher capacity drive with up to 8TB storage or 10TB hub may be a better fit.

In case of enterprises, modular storage systems and solutions that are engineered to help you efficiently move data around your enterprise, cloud and edge are suitable. Such products offer a variety of storage options and configurations that are simple, secure, and efficient for emerging datasphere environments.

Factoring in the time, money and return on investment realized in moving backup and archive to the cloud—for virtually all business—the process of backup is now a strategic advantage. Because backup has everything to do with it there has never been a better time to move your backup data to the cloud.

Protect Your Data

How do we protect company data from the risk of security vulnerabilities? Remote working dynamics present an opportunistic circumstance for hacking and phishing attacks. To prevent businesses from losing control over data, protect your data with encrypted drive, look for Common Criteria accreditation for security features, and ensure every drive complies with the top industry standards for security—for instance, one that delivers protection that suits most needs, and one that meets requirements for government or enterprise customers running highly secure, data sensitive services and application.

Awareness about the data preservation is important to protect the data. Today, there are millions of smartphones users and lot of content is being created with use of smartphones. According to the organizers of World Backup Day, almost 30 per cent of users never backup their data which increases the chances of losing the data more.

A simple accident could destroy most important files as our devices are on the move most of the time. To protect data in all the right ways, a well-organized content with regularly planned backups helps in storing the data on computer, phone and other devices. The advantages of recurring backup’s help in keeping the data secure round the year and provide easy access to the information. Additionally, it is important to know the capacity of data to be secured one should choose the right storage drives to save the data.

Together with company-wide planning and employee education, enterprises are able to achieve seamless data management and support their employees.