The past couple of years has been defining ones for organisations seeking to be data-driven. With the rise of remote and hybrid work models, businesses have increased their reliance on data to streamline operations, ensure innovation and accelerate digital transformation amid resource-constrained environments. This has driven the need for solutions that will help businesses maximise the value of their data.
“Over the past year or so, there were several industries that faced significant challenges such as slashed budgets and reduced resources. They had to adapt to a variety of changes and think of creative ways and leverage technology to do more with less,” explained Gregg Petersen, regional director – MEA, Cohesity.
In order to navigate the changes and challenges in the landscape, organisations had to accelerate their move to the cloud. However, while this move proved to be critical to ensuring business continuity and productivity, it also raised the stakes when it came to cybersecurity and data protection.
“With the hyperscalers making their offerings more accessible in the region, people are looking to leverage the cloud and the different benefits that come with it,” said Petersen. “At the same time, businesses remain concerned about the increasing number of cyber threats such as ransomware. So, people are seriously looking at technologies that can help them alleviate pain points around security.”
Another key challenge that came with the uptick in cloud adoption is data fragmentation. Mass data fragmentation is the ever-growing proliferation of data across different locations, silos, clouds, and management systems, which prevents organisations from fully harnessing their value.
“Data fragmentation was already a problem faced by organisations even prior to the pandemic. But the crisis had exasperated this challenge even more, as people shift to remote working and become distributed across different environments,” said Petersen.
With this problem in hand, enterprises are constantly looking for solutions that will allow them to better protect, manage and utilise their data. “Cohesity fills this spot,” said Petersen. “Our solutions and capabilities are the perfect fit for addressing this challenge. We can help organisations effectively manage their data no matter where it is located.”
Businesses often back up their data using either a network-attached environment (NAS) or object-based storage. Typically, they may do their backups in a remote location or a branch office, they also back it up to a primary site to the main data centre, and then essentially use a public or private cloud service provider or local service providers for disaster recovery. Ultimately, this means that organisations will have multiple copies of their data sitting in different environments, which makes it difficult for them to protect, manage and derive business value from this data.
By using artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled data management solutions, organisations can detect anomalies all of which could indicate an attack has taken place allowing them to take appropriate measures.
“We offer a range of solutions that can help address issues around data fragmentation and security,” said Petersen. “For one, the Cohesity Helios data platform features a Google search-like functionality that allows IT teams to easily find their data no matter where it resides. They can also utilise Cohesity to improve their security postures and help protect their data from cyber threats. Additionally, using Cohesity’s Threat Defence architecture we can provide organisations with data resiliency, strict access controls, AI and ML-based anomaly detection.”
However, Petersen highlighted that effective data management is not only about adopting technologies. Instead, it is also about ensuring that the processes around these technologies are working holistically to ensure a common goal, which is to help organisations unlock the full potential of their data while being able to manage data their way.
“First and foremost, having visibility of your data is key. Cohesity Helios gives you that visibility whether it’s sitting on-premises or in the cloud. Additionally, with Cohesity, customers can manage data in the way that works for them. They can manage it themselves, via a Cohesity powered-partner, or consumed as a service through our Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) offerings — where Cohesity manages everything for them, enabling IT to focus on other business-critical tasks.”
Data is undeniably becoming the most valuable resource for companies of all shapes and sizes. This makes intelligent and effective data management the new business-critical need of the future.
Looking ahead, Petersen predicts that more and more companies will look for a vendor that will be able to provide them with a cloud-first data management solution or ‘Next-Gen’ data management. “A lot of people are still sitting with silos of vendors.”
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He added, “Cohesity is born in the cloud. We understand both hyperscalers and local service providers, and can and will continue to provide the data management needs of the organisations that leverage their services.”
As for Cohesity’s operations in the region, Petersen said that they will continue to listen to their customers. “We are a customer-obsessed company, meaning we are dedicated to ensuring that our customers are successful in leveraging our innovations.”
