In my last blog post in this series, I discussed some important considerations to make sure you are getting the most from your backup as a service (BaaS) solution in terms of data recovery and advanced features like automated cloning of your production environment. In this post, let’s look at some other important, but often overlooked
BaaS success factors.
Number seven: Data Migration and Disaster Recovery
One of the benefits of a multi-cloud infrastructure is the ability to move workloads around to meet your changing needs. In fact, more than 95% of our customers are in some form of workload migration all the time. This can mean moving workloads from one on-premises infrastructure to another — say, VMware to Nutanix — or from on-prem to public cloud, or from one public cloud to another. As you continually seek to optimize price/performance for each workload, workload migration becomes an ongoing activity.
Given this reality, the ability to easily move data—where you need it, when you need it—is critical. Ideally, cross-cloud migration should be a simple “one-click” process. Think about it: If moving a workload requires a big service engagement, you’ve lost the speed and agility advantages that sent you to the cloud in the first place. So look for a BaaS solution that offers one-click simplicity.
This has implications for disaster recovery (DR). Sure, you have DR functionality for your mission-critical tier one workloads, but do you have it for all of your workloads? Most organizations don’t have a comprehensive DR infrastructure because it’s too costly. But cost-efficient DR is possible when you do it intelligently.
Traditional DR software is designed to replicate a full production environment on the DR site—a costly proposition. But what if you had software that was smart enough to store your backed up copy but only use compute resources in the public cloud when you are in a DR situation. Having the ability to use the public clouds to facilitate DR when needed is tremendously valuable, reducing the cost of a comprehensive DR strategy. But make sure you have a BaaS solution smart enough to provide this functionality.
Number eight: Organizational Scaling
When I talk with IT leaders around the world, there is one constant theme: How can we reduce costs? They need the ability to scale to meet growing organizational needs without expanding the IT team. Adopting technology platforms that reduce the burden on IT can help you meet this challenge.
One way to achieve this is to use a backup and recovery solution that supports self-service, enabling business users to restore their own files without having to rely on IT. Consider an analogy from the banking world: Think about how ATMs and online banking transformed financial services, increasing convenience for customers while reducing the need to hire more human tellers. So choosing a BaaS solution that is self-service-ready is a smart move. Even if your organization is not yet ready to permit users to restore files, having that ability will pay dividends if and when you do.
Another important factor is multi-tenancy. Most large companies are divided into a variety of internal organizations or groups. In some cases, you may charge back IT services to the various departments or groups. So having a BaaS solution that supports multi-tenancy out of the box is another important consideration from an organizational scaling point of view.
In the next installment of this series, we’ll look at ways to maximize the cost efficiency of your data protection and I’ll wrap up the series and summarize some key points to keep in mind.
If you’d like more information about how HYCU handles multi-cloud data protection, you can find more information at www.hycu.com. Or, you can experience HYCU first hand by signing up for a free trial at TryHYCU.
Read on to find more ways to get BaaS right:
- Multi-cloud Backup and Recovery: Nine Ways to Get it Right
- Get BaaS Right: Automating Protection, Leave No App Behind Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Automating Protection, Leave No App Behind
- Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Recoverability and Cloning
- Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Data Migration, DR and Scaling
- 9 Ways to Get BaaS Right: Cost Efficiency and Key Takeaways Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Cost Efficiency and Key Takeaways