TH O UG H T L E A D E R S HI P
Kubernetes is fundamentally changing IT and Modern Data Protection By Chris Norton, Veeam Software’s Regional Director: Africa
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s cloud storage and backup become ubiquitous, new technologies that run cloud-based applications and enable operability when systems go down or are hacked are set to change the IT industry. Cloud storage and backup have also significantly changed data protection, with backup and recovery and data management just a starting point for companies seeking to implement a comprehensive Modern Data Protection strategy. Most companies today utilise hybrid models of data storage and backup. These include cloud and cloud-native options, virtualisation and data storage in businesses on-premises private networks. Choosing the right hybrid option for your business and ensuring that data is secure, wherever it is stored, demands careful consideration. In the early 2000s, companies primarily stored data on private networks, with backups placed inside firewalls on those networks. By then, virtualisation technology had also become popular. It enabled companies to virtualise physical machines, giving them the means to instantly failover to restore data to a machine of their choice in the event of hardware or server failure. These technologies allowed businesses to have complete control of data and network management. With the advent of cloud and multi-cloud environments, decisions about where to store your data, critical applications and backups have become more complex. Many businesses now utilise the business services and the data storage facilities of local cloud providers and hyperscalers such as Google Cloud, Amazon
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Business Day – FOCUS 4.0
Chris Norton Web Services and Azure rather than having their own technology infrastructure or data centres. There are sound Capex vs Opex and resourcing arguments for doing so. However, though these businesses no longer control their own networks, they remain responsible for the security and availability of their business data, making data protection as critical, if not even more so, than ever. Today, more than mere data backup and recovery is needed to ensure business resilience. Organisations need to make certain their businesses can remain operational when things go wrong. For example, their cloud service has gone down, they’re experiencing a technical issue, or the company has been hacked by cybercriminals who have deleted their backup, encrypted their data and are demanding a
ransom to unlock it. Such cybersecurity threats are on the rise and could destroy a business. Thankfully, new technologies and backup services exist to help ensure companies can overcome these obstacles almost immediately and get the business back up and running quickly.
Kubernetes enables business agility One such technology is Kubernetes, the next iteration of virtualisation and a platform for creating cloud-enabled applications via containers (a lightweight, unchangeable infrastructure for application packaging and deployment). Veeam believes this technology is a game-changer for the IT industry. It enables a very agile environment for workloads when