Beyond the Cloud as We Know it Today

The Veritas Marketing and Engineering teams have been working together to develop thoughtful and engaging topics for our second season of Veritas L!VE. What is Veritas L!VE, you might ask? Every three weeks, Veritas brings together experts from across the data management industry to discuss a plethora of topics. Some are from what we find to be the most pressing issues, while others are questions and discussions we gather through talking with customers and partners.

Our goal is to provide impactful conversations, weigh important questions around the challenges that we are all experiencing with cloud technology today and explore the changes that we can implement to help us all in the future. We will enter important discussions, including the present and future state of our industry, data strategies, cloud cost management, data sprawl, technical debt, supply chain, product roadmaps, and other sustainable growth strategies. We also promise to tackle some of the difficult questions around data privacy, rights, ethical storage of data, legalities, unbiased technologies, PII, and sustainability both from an environmental and sustainable business perspective. And we will discuss the top trends.  Topics like how the growth and evolution of intelligent automation and autonomous data protection will not only save time and resources, but will also prioritize the quality of life for employees. A trend that will not only help attract more talent for companies but build a better business for tomorrow. We have lots to cover! Let’s dig into some of those pressing topics and analyst research currently top of mind for IT organizations.

Accelerated Digital Transformation

Over the past few years, enterprises and small businesses alike, have quickly accelerated their digital transformation to the cloud and had to make quick decisions for their storage solutions. The aftermath of the last few years or the “new normal” today means that most organizations disparately manage, create, and store enormous volumes of data across different cloud platforms, with exponential growth across hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge environments. Their employees are as distributed across the world, as their data is distributed across servers and clouds—all with a lack of control and visibility. 58% of senior IT leaders lack clarity on what technology their organization has introduced since 2020, according to Veritas research. Additionally, 80% of respondents’ organizations newly implemented or expanded their cloud infrastructure deployment beyond their original plans. The first thing I think of is, “sounds like chaos to me.”

While some IT organizations have tackled the complexities head-on, most are struggling to keep up with all the demands, complexity, advancements in both cloud technologies and ever-changing regulatory requirements. Cloud has hit an inflection point. The cloud, in all its various forms, will continue to be the desired model for organizations moving forward—zero debate on that point—but it is clear that there are serious challenges that need to be solved.

Top cloud challenges today include:

• Data sprawl and control. IT Executives must reevaluate all of the tools and understand where exactly their data is located to avoid the unmanageable sprawl currently in front of them.
• Cyber security and resiliency. Not only must every organization, supplier, and customer prioritize security but they must also optimize their entire environment for resiliency. It’s a big problem across every organization.
• Data visibility. For data to be secure, compliant, protected, and resilient, you must have complete visibility. No dark data allowed. Most IT leaders are not able to confidently say that they know all their data footprint.
• Skyrocketing costs. Organizations must implement data protection strategies across the enterprise with streamlined tools to eliminate unnecessary data costs, waste, and time—including data deduplication and operational efficiency strategies.
• Skills gaps. Teams must ensure they are retaining and training top talent with the latest cloud services and tools in a quickly evolving space.

So, it is safe to say that the cloud that we know today, can and will not be the cloud of tomorrow. It must evolve.

Recently, Gartner looked at the top four trends shaping the future of the public cloud, including the rapid global cloud adoption, with end-user spending on public cloud services expected to exceed $480 billion next year. In addition, Gartner also confirmed the urgency of cyber security adoption in all things cloud, which is not a surprise as 2021 was a record year for Ransomware. With researchers reporting 623.3 million attacks globally. That is 19 attacks per second. Interestingly, as a result, there is expected to be an increase in geopolitical separation and regulatory fragmentation along with enterprises needing to completely reassess their cloud footprint. I found it interesting that Gartner had concrete data illustrating that climate change mitigation initiatives are increasingly affecting cloud provider selection, and the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI)-/machine-learning (ML)-enabled cloud services will become required by 2025. 

Veritas understands that it is not as simple as knowing the trends and planning accordingly. It will require a shift towards thoughtful adoption of new technologies and tools deliberately architected for both today’s needs and tomorrow’s future state. For cloud to stay the amazing lifeblood of IT, the strategies we all implement today around products, people, processes, and data MUST have a purpose and be future-proofed. Not only optimized for business success and efficiency across all aspects of the organization, but address issues with visibility, data security, management, data sprawl, and the overdependence on human oversight.  Solving these challenges will improve business success but will also reduce risk, help keep control and eliminate uncertainty that exists today all while creating a better quality of work/life for employees.

Veritas L!VE: Season 2

Make sure to mark your calendars for our Season One finale on June 14 at 8 AM Pacific.

Then please join us for Veritas L!VE Season Two, starting July 12, 2022, on LinkedIn, and every three weeks after that, for our lively cloud technology discussions outlined above. It is pretty exciting to be at the forefront of the next cloud evolution wave, and we are looking forward to diving into those fruitful discussions.

If you ever miss an episode, you can catch up on our YouTube Playlist. We always welcome questions and ideas for future episodes, so please share below or comment during our next episode with your recommendations.