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Data protection and the cloud

In my last blog post I made the case that data is money. So it’s important to have a strategy for data protection just as you would for cash management. It helps to have a framework when developing a strategy. One framework for developing a data protection strategy is the Data Protection Spectrum. Traditionally, costs grow exponentially as you move from “Not Never” on the left of the spectrum to the “Always On” to the far right. But the cloud has completely disrupted that exponential cost growth. Here’s how. Doing absolutely no backup of your data means you aren’t even on the spectrum. I call that the “Never” scenario. If asked when services will be restored, your only honest answer is “never,” then you’re in really big trouble. So doing the bare minimum backup or snapshot at least gets you on the data protection spectrum, but only at the “Not Never” scenario. Which means your answer would be “I don’t know but at least it’s Not Never.” At the other end of the spectrum is data that is highly distributed, in real-time and the ability to completely lose an entire stack of hardware or application and still maintain operation with…