Bridging the divide between quality and affordable IT
The impact of downtime
One of the critical concerns in this environment is addressing downtime. A competitive business cannot afford a moment's respite; only a few minutes of inactivity, or lack of access to data or applications, can lead to huge losses.
The Veeam Data Center Availability Report 2014 shows that annual loss from downtime and data loss from legacy backup solutions can total more than R100-million annually. Businesses need to be 'always-on' and accessible for their key stakeholders, as well as customers, and partners at all times. IT outages have a huge impact on both a company's immediate profitability but also on its reputation. The loss of confidence resulting from an IT disaster threatens customers' loyalty and retention.
"Even locally, the impact of downtime on business can be significant. Unplanned IT system downtime could cost companies as much as two percent of their annual profits. And while this financial loss is significant, there is also the cost of lost data and the impact that could have on the longevity of the organisation," says Olivier.
24/7, around the clock availibility
Cloud and mobility have fundamentally changed how companies engage with their employees and their customers. It is clear that businesses now need to work around the clock and be 'Always-On'. Data and applications need to be usable 24x7 irrespective of where they are accessed from. The availability of information becomes a critical success factor and systems need to be in place to make sure that it's always available.
"A global forecast by Cisco estimates that the number of devices and connections worldwide will reach nearly 21 billion in 2018 from 12 billion in 2013. This will significantly impact the load on the network and equipment which will increase in direct proportion to the growth of information. The fact that there will be more hardware and software that offers access to data and applications at any time, mean decision-makers need to have the peace of mind that data failure or loss is taken out of the equation."
The gap between quality and affordable IT
Traditionally, this challenge could only be addressed by two types of products: high-quality, high-performance, but expensive solutions that actually were only available to large companies owing to the considerable cost, or affordable programmes, but with a long cycle recovery system.
"The fact that there was a gap between quality and affordable IT was formed largely due to the challenges facing the modern data centre namely the need to optimise the speed of recovery of data and applications and the confidence in achieving complete recovery of information. Today, there are solutions that provide the proper level of protection and availability of data in the data centre whilst also ensuring that the communications channel is consistently optimised," says Olivier.
He believes that this has signalled the bridging of an important divide in IT providing support for business and a platform for further development of technologies in this field. "Opting for an effective solution allows businesses not only to minimise the risks of loss and the inability to recover data but also to enable all companies across industry sectors to put the theory of the always-on business into practice."
