Powering Data Management: Automation's Role in Efficiency, Risk Mitigation, and Cost Reduction
Data management has become increasingly crucial in Africa, with the volume and significance of data growing at an unprecedented rate. As a result, the cost of handling and protecting this enormous volume of data has skyrocketed. A number of paradigm shifts in enterprise Information Technology (IT) over the years have had an impact on how organisations gather, store, and manage data today.
Organisations frequently run disjointed and ineffective data estates, including mainframes, client-server architectures, virtualisation, cloud containers, microservices, and Software as a Service (SaaS). The value of data to organisations also poses increasing dangers of possible compromise, in addition to data expansion and fragmentation. However, despite the fact that organisations are in a constant race to keep up with the pace of innovation, the need to continuously add and protect newer workloads should not be a challenge in itself. Indeed, data protection should be an easy and intuitive process that aligns with the arrival and implementation of new and innovative technologies.
Improving efficiency
Organisations must concentrate on increasing operational efficiency if they want to solve the issues of inefficiency, increased risks, and higher costs related to data management. In the African environment, maximising efficiency and avoiding technical debt are essential. The capacity of IT teams to easily integrate and secure workloads across their technological stack is greatly improved by automation solutions. Having a thorough understanding of the IT estate, including data protection environments, is essential from the perspective of security and recovery. Organisations increasingly use data-protected copies as an "insurance policy" to help them recover from any crises they may encounter.
Risk reduction
Automation risk mitigation is another area of emphasis. Automated compliance reporting and Disaster Recovery Orchestration (DRO) are two common use cases where automation can help with risk reduction. The risk of data loss, downtime, and human error can be considerably reduced by implementing a comprehensive procedure manual, or "runbook," for scheduled and unplanned failovers.
A dramatic change in how organisations plan and carry out their digital transformation initiatives has been brought about by cloud technology. Automation can be scaled up in response to an increase in workload by being in line with this change, resulting in the most efficient use of resources at the lowest possible cost. Adopting automation capabilities results in a data management strategy that is more effective and affordable.
By strategically implementing automation, the growing complexity of enterprise data management in Africa can be efficiently addressed. Automation enables sensitive data detection and correction, automated workload protection, orchestrated disaster recovery, and automated compliance reporting within the IT ecosystem. Organisations that successfully adopt automation will be in a good position to provide long-term data management and protection methods that are effective and affordable.