How to tell when your backup is holding you back.
Admit it – you get attached to your old backup solution. After spending countless days, nights and weekends together, you get so used to it that you easily forgive all its shortcomings.
You may even defend the idea of keeping it, despite daily fights, frustration and its inability to serve your business needs.
But enough is enough – and there is a reason why, according to Gartner, up to 50% of businesses are planning to change their backup solution in next 12-24 months.
Here are the five signs that you need to consider breaking up with your backup.
#1: Your solution was made for VMs
Or it was made only for physical systems. Or only for cloud.
When your backup solution was not originally created to serve all your needs as a unified solution protecting every virtual, physical and cloud application at every location and in every cloud, you will struggle to reach your business objectives and protect your data holistically.
Ask yourself a question: do you have the time to manage your VM backups with one UI, then switch to a different UI for your physical server backups, and connect to your Azure backup using yet another UI?
If the answer is yes – you’re wasting your time with something that wasn’t made for you.
#2. You struggle to meet SLAs.
Did you recently find yourself arguing or gasping in frustration when your boss / business leader asked for a specific, and in your opinion “crazy, unachievable” SLA, RTO or RPO?
Think about it: was it really unachievable, or is it just that your data protection solution cannot keep pace with the needs of your business?
You may want to check out a better solution that would reduce your RTOs and RPOs while aligning with your business.
#3. You’re chained to your vendor’s cloud.
Some time ago, you selected a then-modern cloud solution. It had a fancy web-based UI and seemingly fulfilled all your requirements. But now, you cannot shake the feeling of being shackled to one cloud – and the IT world around you moved on to the multi-cloud reality.
Your data protection solution shouldn’t limit you to only one cloud – and if it does, it’s time to move on to a solution that can be deployed on, and store backups in, multiple public clouds.
#4. You lack stakeholder transparency.
Your backups may be running, and the systems may be protected, but do your business stakeholders have as much insight as you? Do you keep getting requests for additional reports and disaster recovery tests?
This is an indication that your data protection solution doesn’t provide as much transparency as your business requires. Check out solutions with robust built-in reporting and DR/SLA testing capabilities.
#5. It takes a village to deploy and manage.
Do you have a profound feeling of dread or break out into a cold sweat when your IT infrastructure changes? When asked to protect another system, is your first reaction to dedicate 4-6 hours in your calendar?
If you have any of these symptoms, it’s time to break free. Your data protection solution should be unified with a single interface to protect all your systems and data. It should be scalable and streamlined; and, scaling should take minutes, if not seconds.
Time to Break Free
The good news: you don’t have to succumb to nightmares and cold sweats, you simply need to change your backup solution to one that works with you, not against you.
And if your IT budget is tight (when it is not?), check out this promotion and see why Arcserve’s solutions can save you big!
