By Mike Rees, Territory Account Manager for South Africa at Commvault

Many organisations today have a number of individual tools from different vendors to backup, recover and archive their data. This is challenging in a world where data is increasing exponentially, data regulations are becoming increasingly stringent, and data is more valuable than ever. Fragmented, complex environments introduce additional costs, affect usability and efficiency, make operations and maintenance costlier, increase risk, and make adapting to change challenging.

Simplifying your data environment with consolidated backup and recovery tools from a single vendor has significant advantages. Here are the top five business benefits.

1. Improved operational efficiency

Complexity introduces unnecessary complications to any organisation’s operating model, which can negatively affect growth, increase costs and diminish returns. Having a mix of different data storage, backup and recovery solutions also makes it impossible to find, access and fully leverage data. The exponential growth of data introduces complexity all of its own.

Consolidating data solutions and simplifying infrastructure enables organisations to have greater confidence in their data. Not only does it improve the reliability of backups, it also ensures organisations know where their data is and what is being stored, so users can access the data they need quickly and easily. This in turn enables organisations to have confidence that their data complies with relevant legislation.

2. Potential savings

Having numerous disparate systems that constantly need to be maintained and refreshed is difficult to control and costly to manage. Consolidating data infrastructure simplifies it, reducing the number of vendors, which helps organisations to optimise their costs. The cost of equipment and licenses is reduced, which brings down both Capex and Opex and improves return on investment.

It also simplifies management, which reduces the number of resources needed to perform this function, improves productivity and further reduces costs. A consolidated, single view of data also ensures that data being maintained is relevant, once again minimising costs while maximising control.

3. Meet your recovery objectives

Consolidating your data infrastructure streamlines operations, and having fewer tools makes it easier to realise recovery objectives over time. This not only saves time and money, it also improves business operations. A single view of your data gives you confidence that you can retrieve data when you need it and recover it if necessary.

It also enables on-going process improvement, improves visibility into data and ensures that data recovery can be tested more easily to ensure that it delivers as required. In addition, fewer man-hours are required to achieve these goals, so resources can be freed up to innovate rather than spending all of their time performing mundane tasks.

4. Responding better to ransomware

The ransomware threat continues to evolve. In fact, according to the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report 2018, there was a 40% increase in malware variants in 2017. This means that it is no longer a case of ‘if’ you are attacked, but ‘when’. Protecting against ransomware and other malware requires you to see the threat, isolate it, and recover from it. This all relies heavily on having control of your data.

Having fewer backup tools ensures you have a more complete copy of data to recover from if you are the victim of a ransomware attack. All data is consolidated, and you have a single view of your data, enabling you to react faster and mitigate threats.

5. Be proactive, not reactive

Consolidated data infrastructure enables you to respond more proactively to maintenance and change requirements. With a single view of data, intelligence can be added into data management to examine trends and suggest adjustments.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be added to actively predict the future, rather than simply guessing, which enhances decision-making capabilities. This ensures that the crisis that inevitably results from a breakage can be avoided, as maintenance can be performed before anything breaks.

Today, many organisations are struggling with not knowing how much data they have, where it is, or even what it is. There is a significant need for greater control and reduced cost, as well as reducing the number of vendors involved. Consolidating data infrastructure gives organisations a single view of their data, simplifying management, reducing costs and vastly improving control.