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This is part three of a three-part blog post series on innovations in data protection. Read part one on the evolution of data protection here, and part two here, on the importance of snapshot management.

Part three: The final piece of the puzzle

The final piece of the data protection puzzle that IT professionals must consider is: How does their data protection solution integrate with other solutions already in their data center, regardless of whether those solutions are on premises or in the cloud?

We‘ve shown that data protection to the cloud is becoming more important.  The life cycle of data tends to dictate the value of data.  Data that is used less tends to have less value, but does not have “no” value.  The need to have faster, online access to these assets drives the need to be able to store the data online, where it can be accessed, not only for recovery but other use cases.

Analytics is one of these primary use cases. Putting data in the cloud allows users to do so at low cost but still have it available. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus has the ability, working in concert with Spectrum Protect, to migrate data to the cloud for long term retention for corporate governance, data reuse and low cost.

IBM Spectrum Protect integration

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus can be implemented as a standalone solution, or it can integrate with our IBM Spectrum Protect data protection solution to offload data copies for long-term data retention and governance.

Integration with IBM Spectrum Protect allows administrators to swiftly recover and access data that has been offloaded for long term retention. It makes offload possible to a scalable and efficient enterprise data protection solution, consistently recognized as an industry leader. Recommended for storing long-term backup copies, IBM Spectrum Protect can apply efficiency and scale, enabling technologies such as incremental forever backup methodology, deduplication, compression and encryption. IBM Spectrum Protect also offers optimized transport to and from many different storage architectures including on-premises disk and tape as well as private, public or hybrid cloud environments.

Can be set up in less than an hour

Finally, the last critical item to consider when thinking of how a solution will integrate into your existing data center is how easy it will be to deploy. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus deploys as an Open Virtual Format Archive (OVA) or Microsoft .EXE file, most often in minutes. Once installed, it builds a catalog of the organization’s files and virtual machines (VMs). It creates the catalog using the data protection APIs present in virtual environments and applications, eliminating the need for backup agents.

The rapid deployment of Spectrum Protect Plus as an OVA image, along with easy configuration of backup targets, agentless architecture and pre-configured SLAs facilitate protection for virtual environment, making IBM Spectrum Protect Plus an easy to use data protection tool available today for protecting a VM environment.

Summary

It is a given that data protection will continue to evolve as the needs to protect and reuse data change. IT practitioners need to be looking at software-defined models that are scalable and flexible enough to grow and evolve with the needs of the business.  A software-defined model can save the organization time and money, and most of all helps enable them to compete more effectively with protection levels that meet the SLAs of the business.  Solutions like Spectrum Protect Plus can provide them with the means necessary to unlock the value of data stored in these data copies for more than just protection.

As technology evolves, more and more valuable information can be derived from data.  Discover what that can mean for your organization with lower TCO and IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.

The post Pt 3: Bringing data protection into the cognitive era appeared first on IBM Systems Blog: In the Making.