Videos

Christophe: Hi, my name's Christophe Bertrand. I am joined today by Vinny Choinski, and we're going to be talking about some important capabilities that are needed in your backup and recovery and disaster recovery solution, as we face unprecedented circumstances. So, I'd like to talk today, Vinny, about reporting, and also remote access, which is of course, pretty obvious that people would need it, as they can't necessarily be back in the datacenter or in the office.

So let's talk about reporting first. Why should the solutions that end users would leverage have great reporting when it comes to backup and recovery, and disaster recovery?

Vinny: Well, I think it's important not only for the end user but for the system administrator, right? We've seen malicious activity like ransomware making you looking at capacity, you're looking at how much you use, like, when are you going to run out to space. That's always been important, and it's becoming even more important when you have to manage these things remotely. However, now, the reporting can also kind of uncover situations with your new topology, right?

Your users are remote. You're going to see how things are acting, right? So you'll be able to stay ahead of that and make adjustments when you need to.

Christophe: Yeah, I think about this way. I think reporting tended to be very, sort of, piecemeal and fragmented, and now there are some great solutions that look at everything that's available for them to report on, and really give the administrator a unified view, and I think that's really where it needs to go if it's not there yet. So, I'll expect we'll see more of that. Now, the obvious one, which everybody's talking about, remote access.

What does that mean? What about security? What about special permissions that the administrator's going to need? And, candidly, what do you think about the solutions out there? Are they up to par?

Vinny: Well, we're seeing there's a lot of tools, right? And data protection is a discipline, so if you're focused on recoverability, then that's the right approach, right? It's the environment, it's the application, but it's also the practices and policies you put in place. That's the whole discipline in data protection, right? And users that might be remote, if they have a problem now, they want to be able to recover quickly and easily, right?

So, there's a kind of a two different mindsets, I think you're seeing from the user perspective. One, connect and sync. All your applications are either in the cloud, in your private datacenter and the user connects to that, and if they have a problem with their hardware or software on the remote device, they run to Staples or wherever, they call up Amazon, they get a new machine, and they kind of re-sync with the cloud.

If you are taking the approach where there's data on the end user's laptop, then you need to protect that. I think it has to be pretty easy, like adding an app to a cell phone. So it's kind of in that marketplace approach, and I think you're seeing a lot of the companies are, even traditional companies in the data protection space, and the new companies, taking that kind of, again, as a service, let's get this installed like an app that you'd install on your phone.

Make it easy, self service.

Christophe: Well, thank you, Vinny, for your perspective. Again, we will keep discussing some of the key features and capabilities that we see as absolutely needed as things have evolved and keep evolving. The space of data protection is going to change. There is no doubt about it. But, understand that a lot of these capabilities already exist, so if you're an end user or you're an administrator, things are there for you to leverage.

Be smart about it. And if you're a vendor, well, you're going to have to keep doing more in the areas that we cover. Thank you so much for your time.