Kumar Mitra, General Manager, Data Backup & Recovery, Dell Software, APJ, talks about the industry’s changing perception about data protection. Excerpts:
How has the change in the industry’s perception of data protection impacted the sales pitch of vendors?
The technology is no more a siloed function, which nobody understands. It is instead a business enabler. If you look at CIOs today, they play a greater role as business leaders than being technocrats. We define security or as in context with the business values. Enterprises define what data they are generating, the applications that they have and what is the value of that application for their business. You need to define the data value and then align the protection strategy that works better. One solution does not fit all and not every data is same, so it should not be protected the same way.
For every category defined, there will be a definitive recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). It will link up with application SLAs and the application SLAs are linked to the business, based on those RPO and RTO requirements. That is what defines our pitch as well. We do not try to force fit a product into a requirement. We have a range of products that is aligned to classification strategy, something which our customers are liking. Our pitch to enterprises is, you define the data strategy and we will complement with products.
The information age has moved into seconds. Unfortunately, data protection is still like moving bricks, still thought to be a cumbersome process, some enterprises do not understand it. The products are either dated out or the enterprises are using just a script to do the . So, we even help enterprises build strategy, there is no jacketed approach.
How is backup as a service shaping up in the market?
Backup as a service is definitely gaining moment. One of our customers, Sify, has been using our solutions for almost ten years now. The company had started off with hosting centres and IDCs and then moved to managed data centre services. They evaluated our solutions as a service model nearly six years back. They used to offer entire infrastructure as well as a to its customers out of their data centre, so in that sense, on cloud or to a third party data centre is probably not a new concept. The challenge is that a lot of industry segments like BFSI might not be willing to back up on the cloud. So they would look at a private cloud kind of environment, managed and owned by them, but they will still be doing to the cloud.
Going forward, a lot of mid market customers will look at third party cloud set up. I believe the pick up has been slow, due to stringent SLAs. Also, with big players like Amazon, Trimax and Netmagic in the fray, things are beginning to brighten. In fact, lot of telcos have got in this space too. With so many reputed players in this area, I feel customers will become even more confident about the concept and this will make the adoption of cloud for pick up significantly fast.
What is your strategy for the Indian market?
We had been strong in the government and mid-market segments even before we acquired Quest Software. I believe the government is an interesting area. We also have some direct focused partners that are predominantly SIs like Wipro and TCS, which are involved with government and large enterprises.
From a strategy perspective we are 100% channel driven and have a two tier strategy. We have Redington India as our distribution partner, and we are now aligning with them more closely, leveraging their reach. We are trying to build focused resellers, managed and driven by Redington’s partners that can help us go deeper into the tier 2 layer. We are also working closely with consultants. From the growth perspective, we still see government as one of the biggest opportunities for us.
What do you think will be the key propellers for the data protection market in the times to come?
The biggest trend is cloud: all enterprises are focused on how to make business cloud-optimised. Secondly, business continuity plan (BCP) and DR strategy is attracting CIO attention; they want to know whether they do it themselves or put it in the cloud. Third is the growth of data. IT budgets have not been proportional to the growth of data. Enterprises need to manage more data with limited budgets.
People look for slightly self automated solutions, especially on the and recovery piece. Honestly, backup and recovery, for most is like an insurance policy, they think of it only in the time of a disaster. Do the enterprises really want to spend time and man power on it? They would rather focus on applications core to their business. So, customers want solutions that are automated, easy to use and has a competitive TCO. Most customers are not looking at a brilliant product with zillions of features, but they need something simple that does back up efficiently and intelligently and helps recovery when needed.