ESG Videos

Hi, I'm Edwin Yuen, ESG Analyst for data protection, cloud, and systems management. And today, I'm here to talk about the cloud's connection to copy data management or data management and enablement. As organizations continue to expand how they use the data to maximize its potential value, they're increasingly looking to leverage data management and enablement or copy data management solutions. The growing use of public cloud infrastructure, especially by those organizations leveraging services from multiple cloud providers or multi-cloud is driving the use of DM&E and CDM capabilities.

ESG's research indicates that the majority of businesses are using data management technology to orchestrate copies or reuse data and that cloud-based services and management are the leading drivers when it comes to these solutions. ESG's IT Spending Intentions Survey showed that 81% of current cloud infrastructure users are now leveraging more than one public cloud infrastructure provider, and 51% are using at least three unique providers. What is clear now is that the use of multiple cloud service providers, what's better known as a multi-cloud strategy, is really the primary public cloud operational model for organizations.

Organizations are looking towards public cloud services as solutions for their specific application and workload requirements, and they're willing to use multiple public clouds to find the best fit to support these workloads. ESG conducted research on how companies are using secondary data, especially non data protection uses like DevOp support, data mining or use in sales tools. 71% of respondents are using DM&E and CDM technology to enable data reuse.

Organizations are looking for solutions that enable the use of secondary data, especially for those business users. This allows the use of production data sets without encumbering the actual production data or operations. Cloud is leading the way as the driver for data management capabilities, with cloud being two of the leading responses amongst all possible capabilities that organizations are interested in, in data management. More than a quarter selected cloud as the most compelling data management capability.

By leveraging cloud-based resources, organizations can expand the use of their secondary storage capacity for both back up and recovery efforts, as well as for the growing business base uses of data. The continued use of public cloud services has shifted today's IT to choose their operational model based on the needs of the workload, allowing cloud to be the preferred operational model when it drives the capabilities needed by the business. The preferences for cloud service is also evident in how organizations are looking to deploy their DM&E and CDM solutions.

More than two thirds, 70% of the respondents would consider a cloud-based DM&E and CDM solution, making it the most frequently cited method by a significant margin. It is not surprising that the growing desire for cloud-based capabilities would drive the increasing preference for cloud-based solutions and management. As IT and business users become more comfortable leveraging the cloud for workload requirements, they've shown a similar growing preference for cloud-based solution over traditional approaches.

It's clear the rise of cloud and multi-cloud are driving interest in data management with DM&E and CDM. The alignment of operating models, consumption-based pricing, and cloud-based management has even strengthened that position. To fully leverage data management enablement or copy data management, organizations need to understand the key capabilities they're looking for from their secondary data and the benefits those capabilities provide.

Organizations that are looking to enhance or even rearchitect their data management strategies that have not done so should look to incorporate cloud-based DM&E and CDM capabilities where appropriate. And those that have already started down that path would be well suited to expand upon the synergies that are provided by these solutions.