Last week I spoke with Justin Warren and Jeff Leeds at the recent VeeamON event about the wider data availability market, we discussed how system availability was more critical than ever and how or maybe even if our approaches where changing to reflect that, you can find that episode here Analysing the data availability market – part one – Justin Warren & Jeff Leeds – Ep29.

In part two I’m joined by three more guests from the event as we continue our discussion. This week we look at how our data availability strategy is not and can not just be a discussion for the technical department and must be elevated into our overall business strategy.

We also look how technology trends are affecting our views of backup, recovery and availability.

First I’m joined by Dave Stevens of Data Gravity, as we look at how ou r backup data can be a source of valuable information, as well as a crucial part in helping us to be more secure, as well as compliant with ever more stringent data governance rules.

We also look at how Data Gravity in partnership with Veeam have developed the ability to trigger smart backup and recovery, Dave gives a great example of how a smart restore can be used to quickly recovery from a ransomware attack.

You can find Dave on Twitter @psustevens and find out more about Data Gravity on their website www.datagravity.com

Next I chat with Mike Beevor of HCI vendor Pivot3 about how simplifying our approach to system availability can be a huge benefit. Mike also makes a great point about how, although focussing on application and data availability is right, we must consider the impact on our wider infrastructure, because if we don’t we run the risk of doing more “harm than good”.

You can find Mike on twitter @MikeBeevor and more about Pivot 3 over at www.pivot3.com

Last but my no means least I speak with Senior Research Analyst at IDC, Andrew Smith, we chat about availability as part of the wider storage market and how over time, as vendors gain feature parity, their goal has to become to add additional value, particularly in areas such as security and analytics.

We also discuss how availability has to move beyond the job of the storage admin and become associated with business outcomes. Finally we look a little into the future and how a “multi cloud” approach is a key focus for business and how enabling this will become a major topic in our technology strategy conversations.

You can find Andrews details over on IDC’s website .

Over these two shows, to me, it has become clear that our views on backup and recovery are changing, the shift toward application and data availability is an important one and how, as businesses, we have to ensure that we elevate the value of backup, recovery and availability in our companies, making it an important part of our wider business conversations.

I hope you enjoyed this review, next week, is the last interview from VeeamON, as we go all VMWare as I catch up with the hosts of VMWare’s excellent Virtually Speaking Podcast Pete Flecha and John Nicholson.

As always, If you want to make sure you catch our VMWare bonanza then subscribe to the show in the usual ways.

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