The perfect storm that threatens your data

With multiple backup and recovery products in place, your corporate data is surely protected from a whole range of threats: accidental deletion of a critical file, server failure, fire and flood, malware, ransomware…or is it?

Silverstring CTO Steve Miller explains why legacy data protection practices could be wasting time and resources by not doing the job you’re paying for, while creating a false sense of security. And, how the new Silversting solution, Alchemis Protect, that uses tried and tested IBM Spectrum Protect/Protect Plus data protection technology, could be the answer.

The perfect storm that threatens your data

Data availability is something we all take for granted. No one applauds when it goes right. Everyone notices when it goes wrong.

When the worst happens, getting your lost or compromised data back can be the stuff of nightmares. A failed data restore causes pain within the organisation and embarrassment for the IT team, while the introduction of the GDPR means that the Data Regulator may get involved.

The risk has always been there, but today’s data estates are more vulnerable than ever. Data availability is undermined by a perfect storm of converging conditions:

• Explosive data growth, combined with scattered points of storage on-premise and in the cloud, multiplies the chance of failure.
• The greater number of users heightens the risk of accidental deletion.
• An increase in data categories, especially in areas such as personalised data profiles and information from smart devices, creates large, complex datasets to manage and protect.
• The upsurge in in-bound cyber threats makes an attack inevitable.

Staying in control has become a real challenge. With different tools to backup data across multiple locations – on-premise, in a private or public cloud – you have more software to update and more contracts to manage. It’s harder than ever to plan, budget for and deploy the right storage and backup infrastructure.

That’s why Silverstring has developed Alchemis Protect, our fully managed data availability service. It’s a single solution for backup and restore wherever in the world – or in the cloud – your data resides, removing the hassle of supporting multiple backup and recovery products.

Choice + control

In our work with enterprises, we meet many CIO and IT managers who are thoroughly fed up with paying for assets they’re not using, so we designed Alchemis Protect as a cloud-based solution that you can adjust to present and future backup requirements.

Simply pay a monthly subscription and choose the level of service you require for your workloads from a service catalogue. For example, it makes sense to protect mission-critical workloads with our higher-end service.

Spin it up. Spin it down. Terminate any service on demand. The choice is yours as your business evolves. There’s no capital expenditure and no lock-in. You consume rather than own the technology. It’s a model that fits well with today’s fast, agile cloud workloads, as companies strive to create an adaptable business.

Provision and forget

Reassuringly, Alchemis Protect embeds tried and tested IBM Spectrum Protect/Protect Plus data protection technology. However, you don’t need to understand or interact with the underlying technology. Alchemis Protect is so straightforward to provision that non-IT specialists can do it, reducing your reliance on skills that are in short supply. Alchemis Protects makes it simple to add and remove machines to and from a service catalogue. Unprotected machines are also detected.

And talking of skills, as a cloud-based solution, Alchemis Protect eliminates the need to manage complex upgrade cycles that divert scarce resources away from business transformation. We manage all upgrades and refreshes, rolling them out via the cloud, which eliminates service management – and disruption – at your end.

To sum up: our mission is to take care of data availability, so you can focus on business transformation.

To find out more about Alchemis Protect, including our Sleep Easy Guarantee, visit www.silverstring.com/capabilities/alchemis-protect/