Don't Sleep on Data Protection For Your IT Estate Backing up data shouldn't be one of the obstructions to your digital transformation. And it won't be—if you take the right approach.

The extension of applications from on-premises to SaaS environments has ushered in more flexibility for organizations, which now have the freedom to run workloads internally or externally, based on the best fit for the business.

Of course, there is a downside to such location diversity, as it has introduced more complexity for organizations already over-taxed with managing disparate infrastructure systems.

These challenges extend to such critical operations as data protection, which includes backing up data sources spread across a variety of systems and services, such as endpoints, physical and virtual servers, SaaS applications and enterprise workloads.

For every organization, backing up data and applications regularly is essential for protecting them from accidental or intentional corruption or deletion. You can think of it as an insurance policy for preserving data integrity.

But comprehensive data protection remains a challenge for many organizations, which find themselves managing more heterogeneous environments.

Got backup for your business?

Businesses operate hybrid, distributed environments and run applications in public and private clouds, on-premises systems, colocation facilities and edge environments. Organizations deploy applications across multiple locations, resulting in more potential points of failure and vulnerabilities that can be exploited. And as the user base grows, the amount of data is expanding.

As the complexity grows, the risk of human errors and potential gaps in data protection also increases. Moreover, the frequency and sophistication of ransomware and other malicious attacks are on the rise, posing a serious threat. Sixty-seven percent of existing data protection measures may not be sufficient to cope with malware and ransomware threats, according to Dell and Vanson Bourne research.¹

While some organizations have attempted to shift their backup operations to the cloud, they encounter obstacles, including insufficient staff and resources to manage the backup infrastructure, as data becomes more distributed.

Given these challenges, many organizations are turning to partners who can provide comprehensive backup services to meet their data needs. This trend is particularly prominent among businesses operating with limited IT support while managing diverse estates that comprise multiple cloud and on-premises systems.

SaaS backup boosts business growth and resilience.

Nuvance Health, an integrated health system that operates seven community hospitals, took a unified backup approach tool to back up more than 160 applications.

This strategy included using a SaaS backup solution to back up its critical Microsoft 365 SaaS applications. The solution provided "greater ease of use and more refined retention periods than Microsoft native tools," said Rob Gilliland, CTO of Nuvance Health.

The approach enabled IT staff to focus on more strategic business initiatives, such as modernizing the organization's environments, rather than back-up operations.

For organizations such as TMS Entertainment Co., Ltd. SaaS backup helped reduce errors. The animation production company migrated to a new SaaS data backup service after consolidating several in-house business systems into a virtualization platform.

Whereas TMS previously backed up its data in its datacenter and archived it to the cloud, the move to a comprehensive solution eliminated the need for onsite backup while reducing the time to resolve backup errors from one month to almost instantly.

Because TMS went with a SaaS solution, backup capacity could be easily expanded on demand—without the need to install hardware or complete a build. This approach freed TMS' IT staff to focus on the company's digital transformation.

Some businesses can also fall prey to unanticipated downtime or data-handling errors, as they lack the IT staff to protect and secure data.

For instance, scarce IT resources drove Philosofish to seek help preserving its data while keeping pace with surges in business demand. In stepped systems integrator and solution provider Space Hellas, which picked a cloud backup service to help the Greek aquaculture brand back up its Microsoft 365 applications in a centralized location.

The move curbed backup management time, while streamlining auditing processes for compliance and providing resiliency and disaster recovery that respected Philosofish's business requirements.

It's not magic, even if it seems like it.

As it happens, these data backup scenarios share a common thread: Dell APEX Backup Services.
Dell APEX Backup Services provide secure backup, long-term data retention and compliance, which customers manage through a single console to gain a consistent management experience across their Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce.com applications, as well as hybrid workloads and other endpoints.

Dell APEX Backup Services provide source-side deduplication and encryption both in-flight and at rest, offering scalable on-demand capabilities and ensuring cost predictability and control, creating a seamless cloud experience. Moreover, data migration is hassle-free with no data egress charges, making it tax-free.

Remember: Who you trust to back up your data is as important as the data itself.

Here's where you can learn more about Dell APEX Backup Services.

Written by Rob Emsley, Dell Technologies

^{1 Global Data Protection Index Report, Dell and Vanson Bourne, Oct. 2022.}