Veritas Announces Global Strategic Partnership with Microsoft

24.02.2017

INTRODUCTION

Cloud services play a critical role in helping organisations accomplish their digital transformations. A deeper partnership with Microsoft is a great option for businesses looking to either simply lower the cost of data storage by moving it to the cloud, or in a more sophisticated use case—migrating on-premises Exchange to Exchange online in Office 365.

As enterprises look to accelerate the adoption of these cloud services, there is increased attention and scrutiny on how they should go about doing this, and a desire to follow best practices to ensure they’re capturing the benefits the cloud offers, while controlling for risks. The recently announced Global Strategic Partnership between Veritas and Microsoft promises to bring the entire set of 360
Data Management capabilities to the Microsoft Cloud.

“Microsoft and Veritas customers have enjoyed the benefits of highly complementary technology offerings, focused on solving IT challenges in the data centre,” said Jason Zander, corporate vice president, Microsoft Azure team. “Today, our strengthened partnership delivers deeper integration, allowing customers to more easily take advantage of the flexibility and enterprise-grade reliability that
Azure provides.”

More than 86 percent of global Fortune 500 enterprises currently use Veritas software-based data protection, availability, and insight capabilities today—many of which are specifically employed to offer complementary management capabilities to their Microsoft environments. It’s not necessary to completely fork lift out proven and trusted data management solutions when adopting Microsoft
cloud services. Rather, data protection and information governance capabilities can be natively extended to accommodate Azure storage and Office 365 adoption at a pace that’s right for the business.

With 360 Data Management for Microsoft Cloud services, organisations can accelerate their digital transformation and embrace more Microsoft cloud services in a holistic manner that doesn’t leave the on-premises environment stranded, and is focused on what matters most—their data.

360 DATA MANAGEMENT STARTS WITH GLOBAL DATA VISIBILITY

Thirty-three percent of enterprise data is redundant, obsolete, or trivial (known as ROT), and 52 percent of enterprise data is dark (see figure 2) – meaning, organisations have no clue what it is. It’s hard to get value out of data, stored on storage disks and tapes in the dark corners of your data centre, if you don’t know what it is. It’s not cheap, and it’s not easy to know what data must be kept, and what can be eliminated.

If you’re like most enterprises, you probably view cloud storage as offering relief to this problem.
But blindly moving massive amounts of data up to the cloud can actually drive up costs and increase risks—especially if you’re one of the many enterprises that need to carefully consider and navigate an evolving regulatory landscape. A smart move is to establish global data visibility, so that you’re impowered to take proactive action on your data—which may include using more cloud storage to keep valuable data, but may also include emptying out the trash as well.

When organisations cannot effectively identify their critical data among the junk, time, money and effort is wasted. This is an especially painful concept when you consider 41 percent of the data hasn’t been modified in at least three years. By ingesting metadata captured from Veritas 360 Data Management components (see figure 3), Information Map allows you to understand what data you have, where it exists, whether it’s redundant and how many copies you have, who owns it (do they still work at the company?), as well as other helpful insights. These insights can inform your data retention
and migration policies. With Veritas 360 Data Management for Microsoft, you can move data to Azure seamlessly and pragmatically, and potentially lower storage costs in a dramatic, but smart way.

MODERNISE DATA PROTECTION AND LOWER STORAGE COSTS

You may already look for ways to save costs and gain agility by moving business processes to the public cloud; data protection is a likely candidate for cloud migration too. However, blindly moving your data to the public cloud risks highly confidential and regulated data potentially being exposed.

Establishing global data visibility for a deeper understanding of data context is an important first step in any cloud migration project. Once you understand the environment, you can leverage the insight to inform policies such as where, when and for how long data should be kept—including the cloud.

Next, take action on that data. Using public cloud storage such as Microsoft Azure for long term data retention and disaster recovery is not only a way to decrease storage costs, it is also a smart move towards modernisation and digital transformation of your organisation.

While your business is transforming, data protection still lives in the past. In fact, 56 percent of
organisations still use some form of a tape-based solution.

Microsoft Azure storage offers you the following advantages over backing up to tape:

Backing up to Azure is automated. Tape is labor-intensive and more prone to human errors when handling it which increases the restore failure rate.
Access to Azure storage is much faster than accessing an offline tape. You must plan retrieval of tape ahead of time and there is no transparent on-demand access.
Azure provides high data durability and built-in disaster recovery via local and remote replication for little or no charge. Local tape backup requires at least a remote tape copy for disaster recovery, which increases cost and tape management complexity.
Azure is a consumption-based service, which means you no longer need to worry about periodically refreshing backup storage.
Azure offers low-cost cloud storage options. With tape, the management and administration cost often exceed the perceived low media cost.

Rethinking your backup storage is critical. Moving your backup data from being stored on on-premises tape to being stored directly to Microsoft Azure storage is a primary point to start.

Veritas core data protection solutions, NetBackup and Backup Exec, can easily extend data storage out to Microsoft Azure via Azure cloud connectors today.

Simplify data protection to secure and scalable Azure Cloud storage.
Reduce and convert CapEx to a more predictable and manageable pay-as-you-go OpEx cost structure.
Replace your cumbersome and expensive tape backup and administration process with easy-to-use Azure Cloud Storage.

MOVE OFF EXPENSIVE ON-PREMISES HARDWARE AND INTO LOW COST AZURE STORAGE

Microsoft Azure offers you a compelling opportunity to improve your backup processes and save cost. With Veritas, migrating to Microsoft Azure allows you to seamlessly tap into the cloud storage options you need and set it up your way.

Veritas connects to Azure in two ways. You can backup on-premises data to and restore from Azure Cloud storage via the Azure Cloud connector or a Cloud Storage Gateway like StorSimple or NetApp AltaVault.

Possible backup strategies using the new Azure cloud connector:

Data is initially backed up to onsite disk, deduplication storage, appliance or VTL, and a copy is then sent to Azure cloud storage (D2D2C).
Data is backed up over the WAN directly to Azure cloud (no onsite storage of backup data (D2C)

Setting up the cloud connector for Azure is easy. The cloud storage configuration wizard guides you through a few simple steps to setup Azure and provision the storage pool. These actions happen entirely in your backup console, and you don’t require any additional software licenses. Once you complete the setup, Veritas data protection software considers the Azure backup destination to be just like any other
disk storage pool with its security, compression and data lifecycle management functions, which makes is easy to use.

The cloud connector benefits include:

Data lifecycle management to automatically delete expired backups on Azure cloud storage.
Encryption of the data in transit and at rest in Azure.
Multi-streaming of data to maximise usage of the available bandwidth (up to 90%).
Bandwidth throttling to limit bandwidth usage for backups, so other network activity isn’t constrained.
Change journal tracking, deduplication, and optimised synthetic backups to significantly reduce backup times.
Data metering monitoring and reporting for ease of management and a simplified experience.
Data compression to optimise storage costs.

For many organisations, using a gateway device to connect to the cloud is a preferred solution.
For Veritas, gateway devices will appear as a simple disk storage pool that transparently
and efficiently leverages Azure cloud storage, while boosting on-premises compression and
deduplication capabilities. After deploying the solution, simply point the Veritas data protection
software to the new disk storage pool (See figure 4).

Both scenarios allow you take advantage of a hybrid cloud approach that enables you to retain
control over your sensitive or regulated data by storing it on on-premises disk storage or an
appliance, while utilizing Azure cloud storage scalability and cost for less-sensitive data (See
figure below).

47% of respondents listed Microsoft Azure as current data protection target for major
workloads, more than any other cloud service.

DEPLOY DATA PROTECTION IN AZURE FOR CLOUD-BASED WORKLOADS

The number of mission-critical workloads in the public cloud is said to double in the next two years, which presents new challenges for organisations regarding data protection.

It is very easy to push backup to the bottom of the priority list, especially when cloud workloads need to be delivered fast and you need to battle for each IT dollar. Initially, this practice may not create an immediate problem, but as your cloud workloads become mission-critical, backup becomes equally critical. It is not easy to “bolt on” backup after a workload has been up and running for some time as workloads always become larger and more complex. From day one your Azure workloads must experience the same enterprise-level data protection as your local servers and data and to be able to
recover just as quickly.

Veritas data protection software extends seamlessly to Azure without requiring additional tools or processes. Azure-based workloads are protected by hosting Veritas data protection infrastructure in Azure Cloud alongside the workloads. The advantage of this approach? A single console allows you to manage and govern your backups across all your Azure-based workloads and your local servers with the same backup policies and workflows; you’ll have complete visibility and control over your data regardless of the location (See figure 5).

You can turn the same Veritas data protection infrastructure in Azure cloud into a disaster recovery destination for your local servers as well.You can recover your local servers in Azure without the need for an expensive dedicated disaster recovery buildout. You can also use this same approach to recover your Azure-based instances to your local data centre or another cloud service provider.

Benefits of hosting your Veritas data protection infrastructure in Azure include:

Flexibility and freedom to deploy workloads based on business needs without compromising data protection.
Single management interface and catalogue regardless of workload location.
Data from remote branch offices and data centres can easily be replicated to and recovered in Microsoft Azure.
Leveraging Microsoft Azure’s resources, customers simplify and improve disaster recovery. Greater visibility across the entire IT landscape to view data whether it’s located in on-premises data centres or Azure-based servers.

“It’s a fallacy to think that data protection is unnecessary in the cloud,” says Jason Buffington, ESG. “While the cloud offers data durability beyond what any enterprise could realistically offer in their own data centre, data durability is not the same as data protection.”

ENSURE COMPLIANCE FOR OFFICE 365, BOOST EDISCOVERY READINESS

As enterprises accelerate their cloud services consumption, one area they are increasingly looking at is moving from Microsoft’s on-premises Office to SaaS-based Office 365.

In 2016, 78% of organisations indicated current or planned use of Office 365 in the near future, 13 percentage points higher than in 20143. Customers making this move gain modern capabilities that help boost productivity for end-users, while IT reduces costly on-premises hardware purchases and virtually eliminates the complexity of managing and updating software.

According to Gartner, the leading reason for Office 365 adoption continues to be the move to Exchange online. However, moving to Exchange online presents new challenges—particularly for organisations in highly regulated industries like finance, healthcare, telecommunications, etc.—around email retention requirements, eDiscovery and legal holds, and proof of compliance—all of which are expected in enterprise environments.

That’s where Veritas comes in. We match customers’ SaaS-based email adoption with SaaS-based archiving capabilities to deliver an additional layer of regulatory and compliance control as a complementary solution to Office 365, and help customers:

Satisfy email retention requirements and automate proof of compliance by journaling an immutable copy of every email.
Mitigate risks of holding data with a single vendor by creating a secondary copy stored in another location.
Accelerate eDiscovery with advanced legal hold, search and review capabilities.

As a SaaS journal archive and eDiscovery application, Enterprise Vault.cloud provides regulated organisations with an essential layer of functionality beyond the native in-place archive built into Office 365. This is necessary to meet retention compliance obligations, to efficiently manage eDiscovery matters and to defensibly follow legal procedures.

Enterprise Vault.cloud provides proof of compliance by automating retention policy, saving and indexing every email message, and ensuring all required data is preserved. The Enterprise Vault.cloud eDiscovery application allows users to quickly search through millions of items, manage legal matters, collect data, and share online with other users or outside legal partners.

For Office 365, Enterprise Vault.cloud uniquely:

Captures all emails and all email metadata with a journal archive so you know nothing is missing.
Automatically retains what Office 365 might not, such as departed employees’ archives, and a record of every user cc’d or bcc’d on an email thread.
Ensures you have followed defensible procedures for compliance audits and maintain a secure evidentiary chain of custody.

The versatility of Enterprise Vault.cloud also allows customers, who are not ready to give up their on-premises Exchange servers, the opportunity to leverage the cost-effectiveness of SaaS storage. Enterprise Vault.cloud can journal from on-premesis exchange servers, and will keep the data off-site in its long-term repository, saving space in customer data centres and helping customers eliminate capital
expenses for additional storage hardware. All of the same eDiscovery benefits are available for mail archived from Exchange.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH VERITAS 360 DATA MANAGEMENT FOR MICROSOFT CLOUD SERVICES

Veritas is trusted today to provide data management to organisations of all sizes, including 86 percent of global Fortune 500 companies. Microsoft is a leading infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider. In combination, organisations can leverage their existing data centre technologies to integrate Microsoft cloud resources as an extension of their IT strategy and accelerate the realisation of their digital transformation initiatives.

Organisations need to manage their data as a critical asset, with solutions that reliably protect the right data, help ensure resiliency and on-demand access from anywhere and reduce the risks and costs of storing their ever-increasing amounts of data throughout the globe.

The “always on” nature of digital business also demands the removal of the artificial barriers between these frequently siloed capabilities to reduce complexity, streamline operations, and benefit from synergies that otherwise are not achievable.

By providing unique integration and support to deliver global data visibility, unified data protection, optimised data portability, predictably business resiliency, high performance applications, and enterprise information governance, Veritas enables you to accelerate your own digital transformation—while leveraging your existing investments, and establish a reliable foundation for the future.

We invite you to explore the new possibilities presented by 360 Data Management for Microsoft cloud services and join us on the journey.