The Covid-19 pandemic continues to push companies to go into cloud computing, according to enterprise data solutions provider Veritas.
The US tech firm said “the pandemic saw a surge in enterprise demand for computing resources as lockdowns, remote work and social distancing measures took hold.”
Global organizations now see the need for the most flexible infrastructure they can find to ensure business continuity against any potential disruptions, Veritas said.
“In other words, the current pandemic will serve to not only further accelerate, but also necessitate the move to cloud, especially the adoption of a hybrid or a multi-cloud strategy,” said Raymond Goh, head of systems engineering at Veritas Technologies.
However, a multi-cloud strategy challenges the traditional norms of data protection, including the notion that cloud data is solely a cloud provider’s responsibility.
Goh said in Veritas’s cloud-related study, respondents (84.7% globally) believe the cloud provider is responsible for backing up cloud data. “As a result, many organizations that operate under the false assumption that cloud data is backed up by their cloud provider, are more susceptible to security blind spots,” he said.
The technology company further said the pandemic has called for a new approach to data protection, adding that traditional backup and recovery must evolve to provide unified data protection across the physical and virtualized infrastructure of the hybrid cloud. It will be the game-changer for organizations seeking an accelerated post-pandemic recovery.
According to Veritas, the ability to manage data protection from a single pane of glass and to move data within and across public and private clouds will enable businesses to achieve the agility they need to support its data-driven recovery and beyond.
It is critical to note that with large-scale remote work, the risks that come from security vulnerabilities and ransomware attacks will inevitably increase, the company said.
Indeed, according to VMware Carbon Black data analytics, amid the current pandemic, global organizations have seen a 148% spike in ransomware attacks in March 2020, against baseline levels in February 2020. As such, getting business back up and running should never be an afterthought. It should be the priority.
The rapid adoption of technologies driven by the pandemic will be the new normal and remote working is no exception. While IDC has projected that worldwide IT spending will decline by 2.7% in 2020 as a result of the pandemic, two areas – infrastructure spending and software investments – are still projected to see positive growth, mainly driven by the demand for solutions supporting remote work and collaboration.
According to experts, social distancing will be here to stay and companies will likely need to continue to support secure remote-work environments in the foreseeable future.
