Complexity around data protection in the enterprise is increasing, especially with hybrid cloud implementation patterns.
Kelly Brown, senior director: Regional and Channel Marketing for EMC Corporation’s Data Protection and Availability Division, says: “Successfully architecting and delivering an effective enterprise data protection strategy requires an end-to-end view of the enabling underlying infrastructure components including tight integration and automation – aligned with the business value of the applications and data. Only EMC can deliver solutions across a data protection continuum.”
EMC’s new products and technologies address the full continuum of data protection requirements, which spans from continuous availability for mission critical applications to point in time copies for operational recovery to long term retention with archiving.
In software-defined data centres, infrastructure is virtualised and delivered as a service. “To maintain effective protection during the transition to next-generation environments, data protection strategies and technologies must also evolve to a service-based delivery model,” Brown explains.
The massive explosion of data volumes is compelling customers to re-asses their data protection strategies and deploy appropriate technologies based on recovery time and recovery point objectives.
This involves evaluating the tier of applications and data to determine what the data protection strategy should be across the environment. For example, mission-critical applications require 100% uptime with no tolerance for data loss, while business-important applications can accommodate a small percentage of downtime and data loss.
“The focus needs to be on thinking holistically about the different tiers of data protection,” Brown says. “By implementing a planned strategy across the data protection continuum, organisations can adopt an integrated approach across their applications and avoid the risk of protection silos. By identifying the various tiers, customers can determine what they really need to retain and recover, thereby meeting their business objectives and improving cost-effectiveness.”
EMC’s data protection solutions span the full range of customers’ data protection needs, from archive to point-in-time copies to continuous availability for physical and virtual environments.
Recently, EMC announced products to speed new application innovation, reduce costs and accelerate the journey to the hybrid cloud. Included in this launch was EMC ProtectPoint, where EMC increased the level of integration with primary and protection storage platforms to reduce the complexity of the data protection infrastructure.
Benefits include:
* Delivering the performance of snapshots with the functionality of backups
* Eliminating the impact of backup on the application environment, ensuring consistent application performance
* Providing fast recovery and instant access to protected data for simplified granular recovery
* Eliminating the need for traditional backup infrastructure, reducing overall cost and complexity
EMC also continues to make investments into enterprise application integration for its data protection products, bringing data protection closer to the application and giving application owners a level of self-service. These innovations drive new efficiencies into customer environments today, while laying a foundation for a federated, cost-optimised approach to data protection.
“Over the past few years, EMC has delivered numerous integrations for its data protection software that, together with a workload-optimised protection storage platform, are the foundation for a protection storage architecture,” Brown says.
“The recently announced solutions enable customers to deliver a complete spectrum of data protection and availability capabilities as a holistic, consumable service delivered by internal IT organisations and/or service providers. “Data protection-as-a-service is a key tenant for establishing effective protection for software-defined data centres – a ‘bedrock’ that needs to be in place for organisations to confidently transition to hybrid cloud infrastructures.”
