dataprotection

Negotiated RPOs and RTOs that include chargeback. Nothing else matters to the business but RTO and RPO.

Sadly defined RPO's and RTO's are still hard - often not defined. Fortunately newer tech makes it easier to put in general approaches and then easily modify if needed.

You need to understand the data that you are protecting and what it means for your business. Knowing that you have to reply the right policy to the right data and even the right cloud. This is a huge challenge and gets back to the requirement for central management.

Ensure that their is good communication with the business users of technology, and bring in security/compliance to ensure that the right approach has been implemented.

@JLivens I can't tell you the number of times I've introduced the business units to IT in my years....

@24x7ITConnect Do you foresee business people getting more involved in data protection-related decisions?

Risk profiling of the business processes. Determine the extent to which the most mission-critical processes hinge on data-derived apps, models, and other assets, and assess the degree of vulnerability of that data. Prioritize data protection initiatives accordingly.

They will not get their hands in the actual protection process, but their input needs to be queried. Leverage champions in the appropriate business areas to better understand what they are doing, so it can get backed up by the IT admin.

@wcpreston Or, in my case, refereed business/IT "conversations."

@wcpreston That is very troubling and causes this problem. I have run into numerous customers over the years who say. I have no idea about this data and so I am just going to keep it forever! Gulp

I'm not sure we'll ever fully solve the "know your data and business better" problems. Business folks often have items w/far more $ impact to the business to focus on. Takes me back to tools that in general lower admin cost (required w/more data) & are more flexible

Data protection is a subset of data management. In a multi-cloud distributed environment, with quicker development cycles, overall data management is a key function, driven by business needs & agility.

For example, 10 years ago very few businesses relied on AI-driven processes, such as recommendation engines to power e-commerce. Now, many do. If the data lakes used to continually retrain this AI go down now, the bottom line suffers. Protect your lake!

Business needs is a broad topic - recoverability = RPO/RTO, ransomware = detection/eradication, GDPR = masking, test/dev = masking/sampling, cloud/DB migrations = mobility...the list goes on.

I've had some customers did the "we're going to turn it off and see who complains" to find out who the BU was. LOL

@wcpreston mmm - what about adding value with data access/reuse/etc?

@dfloyer Agreed. EDM is the holy grail.

@JLivens agreed. It's a #RiskManagement approach.

@dfloyer Touche' I hesitated putting the "nothing else matters" part of my tweet. ;) How about I say "nothing else matters until you meet their RTO/RPO"

@wcpreston Business negotiation of RPO/RTO: Me: "how much data are you OK losing and how fast do you need to be back online?" LoB: "What?!!!! None & immediately" Me: "How much money do you have to spend" ... and you know where this conversation goes

@JLivens Yes - getting rid of stuff is vital!

@dvellante better yet "how much money do you thing you will lose if this data is lost/unavailable". It's a #RiskManagement conversation.

@vGazza Yes! A crazy expensive one.

@dfloyer Yes, it is often harder to get rid of stuff than to keep it around.

most definitely LoB people are getting more involved in data protection decisions...increasingly data is their most valuable asset.

There are numerous challenges to multi-cloud. The biggest one is relying on tools provided by your cloud vendor. Every cloud vendor is different and so multi-cloud means multi-backup mess. You need a common approach for all data independent of the cloud.

That's pretty loaded, but at it's roots, each cloud has it's own unique nuances to have to work around. The way you work with Azure is entirely different than AWS which is entirely different from a MSP's private cloud offering.

Key challenge is implementing a single console for visiblility into where all the data is in the multicloud, and for managing backup, recovery, security, and policies across it all.

consistency of quality, tooling, performance, provenance, recovery processes, stove-piped processes, myriad skills/knowledge...

One challenge is that people like to centralize data protection. That requires moving data out of one cloud provider into another, or into your datacenter if you're using a cloud-to-DC approach

I would add that the problem gets worse if you use solutions delivered as a service by cloud providers as those environments are locked down and so limit protection options.

Hard to choose one best answer for cloud data protection services. Many customers will use all use cases

@JLivens exactly! The challenge of operating a #multicloud is how to drive consistency across different stacks or IT gets stuck in silos again!

Back to fragmentation and lowest common denominator.

@wcpreston the operative phrase there is "moving data"

There's pure technical challenges (different API's, etc.) but also cost ones - if you want to protect your data from one cloud to another, the cost becomes prohibitive.

Multi-cloud is the current and future reality.It is inherently distributed, & therefore more complex than traditional data protection. Software instances of data protection technology that can run anywhere become essential.

Agree with Jay, DP 'should' be cloud independent. Multi-cloud also begs the question of mobility/migration. Is that outside the scope of today's conversation?

@andriven There's that term. In essence, all these clouds can make the problem worse.

There isn't a centralized way to backup multi-cloud and manage retention without a 3rd party solution.

I should have said "copying data," in case that's important. Even w/in AWS, for example, backing up from VMC to outside VMC can result in egress charges

@JLivens That's very true. Going SaaS on so many applications, you risk proliferating data siloes, hence impeding the ability of the enterprise to manage all its data assets through a single point of visibility and control.

@PeterSmails It definitely should be but it's crazy hard especially when get into more advanced features (converting workloads to run live, etc.). Even for a pure cloud data protection play (where the control plane lives in the cloud), picking one cloud to start precludes others.

@wcpreston remember pipes can be a bottleneck and additional operational costs too! Centralizing data for data protection in #multicloud can be very expensive.

Today's multi-cloud is simply the latest iteration of yesterday's multi-vendor

@wcpreston Not only that, people go in expecting solutions to work WITHIN VMC and find out that the architecture doesn't allow for the same style of access that on-premises provides.

One key issue is moving from current technologies to multi-cloud technologies. Vendors need to ensure that there is a clear path with minimal conversion/data movement/.

What I saw personally at several companies was AWS & Azure supported first (depending on the focus of the company) with GCP and everything else. That's where AWS & Azure slowly start to get platform benefits by moving so fast it freezes out other cloud support.

Agreed, but not centralizing is also expensive, just in a different way. :)

@wcpreston bravo!

@wcpreston centralize management, visibility and controls, optimize data placement, minimize data mobility. New challenges, new choices in #multicloud.

One idea that stuck with me from @HashiConf (I believe from @jayfry3 ) is that any company is just one acquisition away from becoming multi cloud (and potentially having it happen very painfully if the various sides are dug in on cloud strategy).

@andriven So true.

@24x7ITConnect And there probably never will be until we have one cloud vendor to rule them all. ;)

@andriven Which also doesn't look hopeful! :-)

multicloud is actually happening and being operated so it's so relevant right now not some dream scenario

@furrier Yes, and it's just the latest example of "we'll do this now and worry about how it affects our backups later"

@wcpreston totally agree classic isn't it now it's triage time