As you know, cloud has already become an essential business enabler. But now, the question has become not whether to use it, but by how much. So, IT leaders are faced with a conundrum: how do you maximize value from cloud computing, while maintaining data security? 

Data security & the cloud: A growing challenge businesses must overcome

Virtualized machines and cloud-enabled business-critical applications allow data to be streamed in from millions of new internet-enabled devices escalating data growth in terms of both volume and complexity. Understanding the level of cloud adoption that is appropriate for a business and adapting to the changes in process that the cloud brings is essential in tackling this challenge.

Unstructured data is disparate; scattered over endpoints, hard drives and the cloud, and is therefore far more challenging to keep tabs on. Technology that can identify, manage and automate policies based on its content – ensuring that organizations can move swiftly towards meeting new regulations in less time, with less stress, while gaining business benefits – now play an essential role within any IT strategy. Hence, why industry leaders like Commvault provide cloud platforms vital to the data needs of businesses today. 

Despite the cloud’s presence, organizations are only recently starting to understand the level of cloud adoption that is appropriate for their business needs. Meanwhile, data security remains a pressing issue with regard to adoption of cloud technologies. With virtualized machines and business-critical applications becoming cloud enabled, data is streamed in from a multitude of new internet-enabled devices.

So far, 2017 has seen the introduction of significant new legislation in the space, designed and instigated to address global concerns around organizations’ abilities to protect, manage and locate data effectively. Compliance directives (such as GDPR in the EU States for example) will be pinnacle in the cloud and big data management strategies throughout the industry. 

There is no getting away from the message: Cloud is here to stay, and as such there is opportunity for specialists and expertise in the data management and cloud space. Therefore, if you want to future proof your skill set, or are accountable for data management within your existing or future business, now is the time to be focusing your knowledge and learning in this area.

So, do cloud and data affect you? Read on...

Intelligent data? Why enterprises need smarter data solutions

The fact is, both already do or will impact the majority of us in the near future. Increasingly, enterprises require more from their data solution environments— whether that is increased interaction between various data lakes or the ability to transparently protect all their data to ensure compliance with new data governance regulations. In either case, it is clear that traditional data management solutions simply can’t keep up. As this trend continues, enterprises will rush to deploy smarter data management technologies. 

Only intelligent data management can automate access to, transfer and sync data between dozens of applications, databases and various other enterprise data lakes. Automation is needed if enterprises do not want their IT administration costs to skyrocket and their business processes to slow to a crawl. Intelligent data management is required if enterprises hope to eliminate manual data protection jobs and operations, and instead make data protection transparent, continuous and automatic.

Intelligent data protection provides enterprises with the power and visibility they need to make sure that all their data is governed in a manner that complies with new data privacy laws, which have “‘protected by default”’ as a key principal. Given all these forces, 2017 will be the year when enterprises will be forced to finally wake up and realize that intelligent data management is not a luxury – it is a necessity.  

But, data is only useful when value can be gained from it, whether it is in the cloud or on premise. Starting with backup and recovery, organizations are able to fast track into more advanced use cases. 

In order to ensure effectiveness and maintain efficiencies, skilled data and cloud specialists continue to be in high demand. And with CompTIA’s IT Industry Outlook 2017 survey placing Chief Data Officer (CDO), Cloud Services Engineer and Data Visualizers within the Top 8 spots of their “Emerging Job Roles to watch for in 2017” report, this highlights the opportunity for trained and certified professionals in this field—professionals your business needs.

You or your team can begin your path towards data and cloud expertise with Commvault courses available on Pluralsight. These courses are already available, and more will be added during the coming weeks thanks to Pluralsight’s recent partnership with Commvault. Don’t miss your opportunity to stay ahead of the data cloud technology shift and ensure that you and your team’s skills remain relevant.  

Start learning with this course: Commvault Help Desk Operator