One of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is that many organisations have massively accelerated their digital transformation plans, with some compressing strategies that would have played out over years into just a few months.
Digital transformation is not, however, something that has a defined end-state. Not only is it different for each organisation, but strategies need to continually adapt, taking into account the inevitable progress of technology as well as market changes.
Geoff Greenlaw, Regional Director at Veritas Technologies, comments that while this crisis has shown the importance of digital transformation, the pace of this process is not about to let up.
“The market conditions at the moment have accelerated the need for digital transformation and we’ve seen massive growth in areas such as telehealth and the communications verticals,” he says. “The telehealth market is expected to grow into a $150 billion industry in the next 12 months, from a mere $40 billion a year ago. Collaboration solutions such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have seen their user counts more than triple in recent months, as work-from-home becomes a critical part of keeping businesses up and running.”
He adds that these are just some of the most high-profile examples, but every industry is undergoing a fundamental shift in the way they operate. “CFOs are seeing the potential cost benefit of having teams work remotely and they are already factoring this into future budgets. For IT teams, however, this brings a new set of challenges, as they have to ensure that not only can they support remote workers, but more importantly, they are being asked to ensure that the technology underlying key business processes is ready for this shift as well.”
This shift needs to be underpinned by secure access to exploding volumes of corporate data, and Greenlaw points out that this is the one area that poses the greatest threat to organisations of all sizes.
“We are in an era of massive data growth. IDC predicts that by 2025, the volume of data created globally will have grown to 175 zettabytes, and when you combine this with research from Gartner showing that 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years, you get some idea of the scale of the problem facing companies and their IT teams,” he says.
Companies are being asked to ensure that this data is secure, and do this in the face of increasingly strict regulatory environments. “Cyber criminals are increasingly innovative, and we are seeing the number of ransomware attacks escalating rapidly, with one ransomware attack now happening every 11 seconds, according to Cybersecurity Ventures,” he comments. “Ensuring that you’ve properly protected your critical data is becoming increasingly difficult. It’s not so much a matter of protecting all your data as ensuring that you’re protecting the right data.”
The real challenge is that most of the zettabytes of data that Greenlaw refers to is what is known as redundant, obsolete and trivial (ROT) data. He says that in some environments, this could account for more than 80% of data being stored “just in case”. Differentiating between what data is critical to the business and needs to be protected, versus what is version 1.1 of a PowerPoint presentation from two years ago, is a clear illustration of some of the difficulties organisations need to address.
This is compounded by the inherent complexity of IT environments. With multiple – often overlapping – systems powering business today, information continues to be duplicated and information silos continue to be created. With digital transformation accelerating, the risks associated with this are multiplying. While complexity in the data centre is not something that will ever be eliminated, tackling the classification and insight into your data is a critical first step.
Greenlaw explains that there are three key areas of focus for every organisation in creating the right foundations for digital transformation:
Standardisation
You have to accept that there is always going to be complexity in the IT environment, but it’s possible to leverage tools to abstract much of the complexity away. By standardising the systems that manage data across the enterprise, you can to start abstracting value from your data.
Gain insight
Before simply jumping into any course of action, it’s essential to understand what you have. Once you have insight into what data is business-critical, and what is simply taking up space, it’s possible to formulate a proper strategy around how you manage your data to make far more informed business decisions about how and where you store that data.
Protect your assets
Once you have visibility into your business-critical data, you need to ensure your business continuity and disaster recovery processes are optimised to protect this. In the event of a ransomware attack, an encrypted backup is your only line of defence.
Whatever the size or scale of your business, the next year is going to be one of rapid change. Ensuring you have the systems in place to abstract complexity from your environment may prove to be the difference between a digital transformation journey that ensures future success, or having to revisit the whole process again in a few years’ time.
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