Exclusive: Veeam’s best practices for availability in a cloud era

The new digital economy has brought about many changes, forcing businesses and their IT infrastructure to react in new ways to meet new demands.

When it comes to the cloud, the changes are just as dynamic.

Research has found that 81% of enterprises are embracing a multi-cloud strategy with a mix of solutions across private, public, and hybrid clouds – across multiple providers.

With this big move to multi-cloud, the next question is How can businesses ensure their apps and data are available across the new multi-cloud models they are adopting?

Before that question is addressed, here are some stats highlighting the downside of low availability:

• 66 % of enterprises admit that digital transformation initiatives are being held back by unplanned downtime
• $21.8M is an average financial cost of availability and protection gaps for the enterprise
• 60% of U.S. businesses that experience a cyber-attack suffer the consequence of data loss
• Fortunately, there are some measures businesses can take to ensure optimal availability.

Here are three key multi-cloud availability best practices to consider:

1. Leverage the cloud for backup and disaster recovery of on-premises data

A good start for any availability strategy is to make sure to follow the 3-2-1 Rule, which is to have at least three copies of data, two of which are local but on different mediums, and at least one off-site copy. Businesses with a multi-cloud strategy are in an ideal position to take advantage of the cloud to help execute a 3-2-1 approach and optimise any legacy backup systems with the cloud.

2. Protect data that's already in the cloud

It's important to have control and protection over data already deployed in the cloud. Email data, for instance, is something many organisations must retain for extended periods of time for compliance and regulatory needs. Whether an organisation is using a SaaS solution, such as Microsoft Office 365, or hosting their email application on IaaS, it is critical to have protection against accidental deletions, outages, or a malicious attack.

3. Replicate and migrate applications and data within the cloud

In a multi-cloud strategy, a company will most likely have "born in the cloud" applications in their environment. Being able to replicate these applications for data protection and recovery will be critical to making sure these apps stay up and running in the event of unexpected downtime.

For instance, a company may currently run their cloud-based app in the IBM Cloud data center located in Houston, Texas.

It can replicate and migrate this app to any of the more than 50 IBM Cloud data centers around the world, or to any data center within its cloud to meet its data protection and migration needs.

With the momentum to multi-cloud adoption in full swing, having an availability strategy and plan is more important than ever.