Seven steps to complete data backup as a service
Data backup has never been the hottest technical topic, but it is a problem that enterprises must face. Although it is not popular, it is crucial and should not be underestimated. The increasing complexity and high cost are the data backup challenges faced by enterprises today. For enterprises, data backup often means a lot of solutions, increasing data volume and long-term capital expenditure and operation plan. This is why data growth management and data backup and recovery are among the top seven IT investments in 2016, with the Asia Pacific data protection as a service market growing fastest
Service providers are helping enterprises better protect data by providing backup as a Service. They can provide high-quality solutions to help customers realize the advantages of cloud platforms, while reducing the risks of compliance, security, availability and data management. Data protection is the core of value-added services for service providers, and can realize the differentiation of their product portfolio in the increasingly fierce competition. Protecting customer data has become the foundation of service providers' brand commitment, and customer satisfaction can be improved through excellent reliability, accessibility and transparency.
From the perspective of infrastructure and management providers, if data backup has become a major problem for enterprises, then service providers cannot easily solve this problem. The service provider needs to carry out detailed planning and precise implementation to launch a solution that is satisfactory to everyone, so as to reduce costs and gain profits.
In the field of data protection and information management, Commvault is a well-known solution provider, which has always helped enterprises to meet the challenges of data and information management. They gave the following seven suggestions on how to provide enterprises with the best data backup as a service solution:
1. Know your customers well
There is no doubt about that. However, in the process of service development, one of the most common mistakes is not determining the target market and customer usage. For example, many enterprises are complaining about their data protection problems. Therefore, as a service provider, how to win new customers in the field of data backup, especially customers in new industries, must ensure that its data backup as a service solution can provide customers with a differentiated experience superior to competitors.
2. Establish a business case
Building a business case is an essential investment. Creating a data backup service requires investment of time, energy and money. It requires not only communication with various departments within the enterprise, but also cooperation with suppliers to require them to invest. Usually, we will avoid setting too high expectations to avoid disappointment, but if we want to maximize the use of supplier partnerships, we need to understand customer needs in detail to provide the best service. Therefore, a reasonable grasp of customer consumption and demand data is the key to the problem. If there is no successful business case to prove the rationality of the investment, the best suggestion is to cooperate with existing data backup service providers and "turn their services into their own" - this is a relatively simple way to enter the market.
3. Start with service, not technology
It seems a strange suggestion to start with service rather than technology, but it is not. Generally, service providers focus on the latest product features, speed, transmission and functions. However, the services they initially provide are usually simple solutions with competitive prices, and then the service content and value-added functions of the enhanced level agreement are added on this basis. For example, lower data recovery time objectives (RTOs)/data recovery point objectives (RPOs) for critical work, more powerful management functions or security, longer retention periods, offline replicas, etc. This will help service providers expand market attractiveness, reduce the risk of service commercialization, and ensure that their solutions are more flexible than some competitors' "general" solutions.
4. Perfect products are not achieved overnight
Great achievements were not made in a day, and data backup services could not be completed overnight. Even if suppliers innovate faster, their product portfolio will take a while to mature.
It takes time to develop a comprehensive product portfolio, and it also takes time to invest in new services guided by customer needs. Generally, the most commonly used uses of products are developed first, and then the proceeds obtained are used to further develop enhanced services. Taking Commvault as an example, Commvault, as a leading provider of data protection and information management solutions, provides global enterprises with data backup, archiving, disaster recovery and enterprise search services. When the product is launched for the first time, it limits its functions to the most popular data backup domain, and then improves the solution in stages.
5. Streamline costs through integration
Once the data backup as a service solution is launched, service providers need to check whether the revenue is growing smoothly? Is the operating cost higher than expected? This is usually one of the typical challenges they face. Usually, at this stage, service providers need to achieve the purpose of simplifying operations through accurate investment. Therefore, what they need is a data backup provider that provides customized personalized services through a comprehensive and open API. Service providers can significantly reduce long-term operating costs through the following methods: automatically performing tasks that impose cost burdens on service businesses (measurement, insight, improvement). The improvement solutions provided by service providers to suppliers include tenant management, tenant deletion, and integration of data backup into your environment as a larger part, such as billing, configuration, and system management. At the same time, it can also provide a higher level of end-user self-service, customized reports and customized visualization.
6. Embrace the public cloud
Top public cloud providers are actively competing in the public cloud market. Data centers have been set up in most regions. At the same time, enterprises, even the financial system industry (FSI) and the public sector can respond well to network security and data sovereignty issues (such as ASD government certified cloud services). For service providers, the best practice is to transform former competitors into partners and focus on providing differentiated services, especially value-added management services that enterprises cannot provide. Cloud storage service has unparalleled durability, geographical redundancy and unit price per GB, so it is very competitive in long-term storage and tape replacement. At the same time, the public cloud is the best choice for offsite data backup of disaster recovery. Using public cloud can keep up with the market development trend and provide customers with more choices.
7. Respect your partners
If a service provider wants to continue to successfully provide any service solution, it needs a trustworthy partner. In the past, the way of cooperation was to invite three suppliers to participate in bidding, conduct scheme testing (PoC), and then conduct price war. Now everything has changed. If service providers want to get utility prices from suppliers, this has become a risk sharing model. Changing from the previous supplier relationship to a trusted partnership will bring more opportunities. Sharing IP, joint investment and listing activities can promote both parties to achieve a win-win situation.
