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Research Objectives

• Set forth a premise as to how virtualization and cloud computing change the way data is protected
• Identify the key drivers and inhibitors of change
• Articulate the key planning issues users face in implementing data protection in the context of cloud computing
• Propose a five-year technology roadmap
• Provide recommendations and planning assumptions for users
• Provide a framework against which the vendor community can deliver value to customers

Working Premise

• Backup as we know it is broken (or at least inefficient) and will evolve over time to become something very different than it is today - (see footnote)
• True data assurance requires:
  • Real time data fluidity where the state of data is preserved
  • A new definition of "Data" where data becomes the machine state and persistent data (on disk) at a pre-defined point in time
• This new data moves seamlessly throughout the data center, the enterprise and ultimately in the cloud
• Continuous Data Protection (CDP) becomes the standard of measurement by which all Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)are measured
• As data moves throughout systems and networks, there are opportunities to:
  • Reduce the data - compression and deduplication
  • Protect data
  • Archive data
  • Perform analytics on data
  • Create, extract, leverage metadata
• Data recovery becomes more about your data, where you want it, when you need it
• Recovery granularity drives the definition of RPO and RTO (transaction, item (file, email), application, system, data center)

Key Issues

(i.e. member questions)

• What's driving users to disk-based data protection?
• How is data growth changing the way IT protects data?
• How will the role of snapshots evolve in the future of data protection?
• What is the impact of virtualization and cloud computing on the future of data protection?
  • How are virtualization and cloud computing changing RPO and RTO?
• How will restore change in the future?
  • Which snapshot technologies fit best with virtualization and the cloud - what are the main considerations for users?
• What is the future of data protection software?
  • How will advancements such as VADP and CBT evolve and what impact will this have on traditional data protection?
• What is the future of data protection hardware?
• What is the future of global/unified data protection management?
• Is tape still viable? What are the use cases?
• How will technologies such as compression and data deduplication evolve?
• How will virtualization and cloud computing change disaster recovery?
• Where will SSD and Flash fit in the data protection cycle of life?
• What is the role of data dispersal?

The Market

Segments, players, growth, context

Pyramid - Data Protection and Management

Top of the pyramid - Snapshots, Clones, CDP, Synch recovery, asynch recovery

Middle of pyramid - "Active" data protection software (w/ and w/o deduplication), data protection HW w/deduplication, Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL)

Bottom of pyramid - "Long term" data preservation - Tape

Tangential to the pyramid - Archive (software and hardware) with segments for regulatory compliance, business governance, data preservation

Key Drivers and Inhibitors

Drivers:

• Shorter RTO and RPO requirements
• Virtualization capability to enable a cheaper RTO
• Increased drive for accountability, transparency, information governance, compliance and risk management (archive)
• Unrelenting data growth (IDC Digital Universe)
• Flattening of the globe
• The "new data availability reality" - machine state vs just persistent disk
  • SSD/Flash
• Ubiquity of networks
  • New economics of networks
• Economics and agility of cloud
  • On demand
  • self-service/rapid provisioning
  • xaas
  • Chargebacks/showbacks
• The ascendancy of cloud service providers
• Data mobility

Inhibitors:

• Virtualization brings costs and complexities
• The ability to virtualize tier 1&2 apps - ecosystem maturity
• How is the cloud protected? At what costs?
• External cloud performance
• Bottlecks - people, network, storage, restore complexities, consistency of data
• Information risk and government chaos and stasis
• Lack of automated data classification and policy management
• People, process and technology barriers
• Lack of unified data protection management
• Old data reality (inertia)
• Cloud security, privacy, Interoperability, network performance.

Planning Assumptions

Address the key issues in depth

Example - What is the impact of virtualization and cloud computing?

• Live vs non-live 'state'
• Enables shorter RTOs
• Creates complexities - machine and data states are not containerized (today) - storage persistence
• Assumption - files become more prevalent - sharing - storage fails less frequently than servers and applications
• Assumption - I/O becomes the bottleneck requiring the leverage of tightly integrated storage optimization techologies (compression, data deduplication)
• VAAI and VADP and CBT become more important
• Source side deduplication and traditional data protection software technologies collide
• New data reality becomes the mandate - (Data Garden)
• Orchestration software required - autoprovisioning, chargeback, etc
• The role of snapshots
• Assumption - 70% of shops will re-architect backup by 2014
• Private v public cloud
• Data centers 'competing' with cloud service providers
• Facilitates / Applications elimination of the notion of backup window
  • Multiple copies live in the cloud
  • Technology makes it efficient to store
    • Assumption: technologies like compression and dedupe will be embedded
• Virtual server and application awareness

Technology Roadmap

Today: Stovepipe technologies, processes, point products/feature products

Near-term: Unified hardware and software and simplified management

Mid-term: Data protection as a service - b/u, cdp, replication

Long-term: Time machine for the enterprise - data center 2015 - diagram - moving data and applications at distance and pointing to a virtual snapshot copy for recovery.

Recommendations

Action Item:

Footnotes: Why Storage is Broken and The Future of Tape!from Fadi Albatal