Navigating Cost Optimization & Risk Mitigation in the Modern Cloud Era

The Modern Cloud Era.

It sounds so dramatic and official, like some sort of changing of the guard akin to moving between the Jurassic and Cretaceous eras, but what does it really mean?

It means that the challenges and opportunities presented by the widespread adoption of the cloud have led to a world where, rather than dinosaurs, hybrid and multi cloud adoption has become the new mainstream. Almost every company on the planet is leveraging at least one kind of cloud, with many adopting formal diversification strategies to leverage hybrid and multi cloud approaches. This diversification, however, can lead to complexity which brings new challenges in the realms of cost optimization and risk mitigation.

The Modern Cloud Era is about navigating the world of digital transformation, where every company and department relies on modern tools to get their jobs done. In this new world, the importance of getting data and workloads organized and centrally managed across a purposeful multi-platform strategy to deliver on business objectives while maximizing cost efficiency and risk mitigation cannot be overstated. When executed correctly, hybrid and multi cloud strategies can lead to improved operational efficiencies, enhanced data management and compliance capabilities, and greater business scalability. When done wrong it can create artificial data silos, increase the human for skilled labor, and require additional labor hours to implement and support.

We recently had the privilege of having our Vice President of Solutions Engineering, Cesar Cid de Rivera and Sr. Director of Solutions Engineering, Vincenzo Costantino give a talk on how to best navigate the waters of this new, Modern Cloud Era. Together, Cesar and Vincenzo identified three primary benefits of successfully implementing a hybrid & multi-cloud strategy, as well as some tips in how to get there.

Some of the major benefits you can hope to expect are:

• Improved Operational Efficiencies for your process and staff execution
• Enhanced Data Management and Compliance Capabilities
• Achieving Greater Business Agility and Scalability 

1. Operational Efficiencies
Finding staff with a wide range of competencies in multiple native cloud interfaces can be difficult and costly. By leveraging centralized platforms that provide manageability across all clouds and workload types, you can remove this barrier and allow the platform to do the heavy lifting. Commvault Command Center is an example of a platform that provides native manageability across cloud providers and workload types with just a few clicks, saving time and money while reducing that need for expensive niche talent.

Another challenge in improving operational efficiencies is the risk of downtime, productivity loss, and potential compliance breaches resulting from unintentional human error. Policy-based automation can be a life saver in these scenarios, giving IT teams the peace of mind of a “set it and forget it” approach to critical workload movements and failover procedures. The Commvault Command Center can empower IT teams to easily create and set automation plans, either from scratch or from an existing template.

2. Enhanced Data Management and Compliance Capabilities
In a Modern Cloud Era of rapidly migrating workloads and form-factors between clouds and form-factors, data sprawl can become a major concern. That data sprawl, however, goes beyond simple storage capacity concerns and has serious implications in contributing to the unintentional creation of a larger attack surface for bad actors, as well as inflating cloud provider fees. 

Taking control of data sprawl begins with ensuring that the right data is on the right storage tiers and has been de-duped and optimized across all environments and workloads. Deduplication and compression can generate savings up to 80%, while storage tier optimization can increase that savings by another 35%. This approach can lead to downstream benefits such as reduced RTO and a smaller attack plane to be targeted by bad actors.

3. Achieving Greater Business Agility and Scalability
Lack of visibility into ALL data, no matter where it lives is the critical underpinning of any successful hybrid or multi-cloud operation. Overcoming this obstacle is critical for success and can be done utilizing a truly centralized platform for all your workload environments. The good news is that Commvault provides one unified experience for your entire data protection strategy, rapidly enhancing your operational agility in catering to outages, audits, and events, without impacting production.

For a detailed overview of this topic and additional information about how Commvault’s powerful technology suite can accomplish this and much more, please visit our website or watch the recording of Cesar & Vincenzo’s session here.