Scott Crenshaw is Senior Vice President of Strategy & Chief Marketing Officer for Acronis, a provider of data availability, accessibility and protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments.
SCOTT CRENSHAWAcronis
It’s time to get serious about getting enterprise IT to “grow up.” Virtualization and cloud have been through the hype cycle, and, moving forward, we’re finally going to see the full potential for more scalable, reliable and cost-efficient IT services. But, with Big Data and BYOD complicating things, IT has a serious task ahead to keep things running smoothly and to keep users from circumventing its control. To do this, enterprise IT has to create services that engage the user with on demand functionality. 2013 will see this starting to happen. 2013 is the year that:
- IT becomes invisible – Virtualization is a commodity, and it’s everywhere. In fact, the Acronis 2012 Disaster Recovery Index found that 89 percent of U.S. companies surveyed had already virtualized some part of their IT infrastructure. Now, virtualized environments must ensure data is on hand and accessible at all times and from anywhere. Fundamentally, this is about end-point access and guaranteeing a seamless user experience, so users don’t have to think about where things are coming from or navigating tricky data access. 2013 is the year virtualization means invisible IT.
- Cloud storage becomes a reality – The first generation of cloud development addressed the nuts and bolts of virtualization, application mobility and hardware optimization. The new paradigm of the cloud is availability, access and assurance. A Forrester study has already found that companies can cut costs as much as 74 percent by storing data in the cloud. And, this is only the beginning. 2013 is about making sure the cloud is ready to help sustain your organization’s data storage.
- Big Data becomes highly available – Big Data is getting bigger and bigger, acting as a main driver for IT spending in the enterprise. To be specific, $232 billion in IT spending through 2016, according to Gartner. The good news is, companies can prioritize data to ensure accessibility and availability for business critical functions, while still preserving costs and resources. This involves a tiered storage strategy, with strategic implementations of physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure components. 2013 is the year of getting data-organized to make organizations run more efficiently.
- The backup market shrinks – The traditional backup and recovery market is a dinosaur. But, new trends like Cloud, Big Data and IT consumerization, are too much for the big guys and laggards to handle (but, shh!, don’t tell them). That’s why the more nimble disruptors will gain share and shrink the market. They’ll do it with disruption, mainly by emphasizing data access and not just security. 2013 is the year of real disruption in the backup market to address new IT realities.
- The enterprise accepts Apple – Why not? Everyone else has! In fact, 30 million iPads are likely to sell this holiday season, and employees will be working on them whether their companies like it or not. BYOD is here to stay, and, if the enterprise doesn’t adapt, then users will leave IT behind. Enterprise IT must allow users to connect, share and collaborate in a secure environment without limiting their freedom. 2013 is the year we enable the enterprise to be Apple-ready.
These developments are permanently changing the enterprise IT landscape. That’s been said many times before, but, this time, it’s true. Today’s user is constantly glued to Internet services that give them instant results. They now expect the same quality experience from IT. And, in 2013, IT can satisfy that demand by being highly accessible, available and secure.
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