Digital Authority recently spoke with
Laura DuBois, program director for
IDC’s Storage Software practice. The
Storage Software practice covers
storage and device management,
storage replication, data protection
and recovery, storage infrastructure,
file systems and archiving software
segments. DuBois is responsible for
research, consulting and client rela-
tionships, and she oversees IDC’s
team of storage software analysts.
Laura DuBois, program director for IDC’s Storage Software
practice has over a decade of experience in the storage
industry with focus on backup and recovery
Digital Authority: C-level executives are asking IT
organizations to take on the protection and recovery
of increasingly distributed data in a more consistent,
repeatable, recoverable, centralized and enforceable
manner. What is bringing about this change in policy,
strategy and approach?
Laura DuBois: Our research shows that data on the
edge—in branch locations as well as distributed
on endpoints such as laptops and other mobile
devices—is being put under centralized control.
The motivations for this vary but are typically
related to the need to protect and secure sensitive
corporate information that may be distributed,
and the need for effective recovery from different
failures. When data is distributed and outside of
centralized control, it presents a higher risk for
compromise. IT processes that are policy-driven
and executed in a consistent, repeatable and
enforceable manner illustrate effective governance and compliance practices. Additionally, IT
controls that are centralized can be performed by
technical experts, rather than relying on regional
or local office staff or individual employees to
perform that function.
photo courtesy of IDc
The Great
Migration:
Online Storage
Comes of Age
Capital and operating budget
savings, faster time to
implementation, and better
IT resource allocation top the
list of benefits of an online
storage approach
DA: What are some of the top-level benefits to an
online PC backup approach, or Storage-as-a-Service,
versus an on-premises implementation?
LD: IDC has just finished up some primary research
in the area of Storage-as-a-Service. We surveyed
800 firms of different sizes, and more than half
of them—53 percent—are evaluating or considering online backup. The benefits of an online
