While backup is among the oldest, most performed tasks in the data center, the advent of virtualization and cloud technologies has changed that backup and disaster recovery picture dramatically in the data centers. Recently, I have been observing a trend toward increasing adoption of a cloud-based backup and disaster recovery implementation by SMBs.
Why the big change? Many factors are in play here in my humble opinion:
- SMBs are looking for IT solutions beyond hardware, speed and performance to improve their business efficiency. For example, cloud based disaster recovery, in particular, is attracting SMBs as it allowed them to perform virtualized disaster recovery shrinking the CAPEX required with traditional DR.
- Cloud Service Providers are filling a niche for cash conscious SMBs by delivering a mix of private cloud, public cloud, traditional hosting and colocation cloud services. This hybrid phenomenon is now becoming more common due to increase in virtualization and cloud technologies adoption. And now Channel focused solutions like StoreGridoffer simplified and affordable managed IT solutions targeting SMBs at a very attractive price.
- In recent times, the empowerment of business user via connected mobile device seems to be a recurring theme. Looks like a new era of mobile computing for people which is being characterized by mass displacement of laptops etc with mobile and tablet devices making it for business users to create, collaborate and share with each other in the cloud.
- Interestingly, file syncing and sharing may emerge to be the endpoint device backup solution for the future. Business productivity solutions like SyncBlaze adopt mobile user-friendly paradigm supporting different device types, as well as enable file sharing, access and collaboration across multiple devices like smartphones and tablets.
- The advantage gained by scaling application resources up and down, according to the user experience to seamlessly deliver time-sensitive and elastic applications makes cloud computing attractive. It is truly an answer to companies that need dynamically monitor and measure performance from the customer experience perspective.
- SLA will certainly become a key buying criterion with emphasis on cloud service provider governance and customer requirements. Also, integration between different cloud based services like Salesforce.com will be key for business to adopt cloud.
- Adoption of ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform (most notably OpenStack) will pave the way to foster much-needed cloud standards and eliminate the fear of proprietary vendor lock-in for businesses.
About the author
Srivatsan Venkatesan is Vice President of Product Management for Data Protection solutions at Vembu Technologies. He is responsible for driving the product direction and go-to-market strategy for StoreGrid product line, which is focused on delivering business continuity and disaster recovery solutions for the SMB channel market. Srivatsan has extensive experience in undertaking partner development, marketing and technology initiatives in the Storage, Virtualization and Data Protection domains. Prior to joining Vembu, Srivatsan was Founder & CEO of Cloud Nucleus, which successfully developed a Virtualization based data protection software and was subsequently acquired by Vembu in 2011. He can be reached @storcube