Muggie van Staden, MD and CEO of Obsidian Systems.

Leading provider of end-to-end digital services and solutions Obsidian Systems, a specialist in Open Source technology, cloud adoption and big data, recently co-hosted a webinar to discuss the value of Cloud Data Protection, technology that enables businesses to take maximum advantage of enhanced data protection and insights.

Obsidian joined its industry partners First Distribution and IBM in a webinar Cloud Data Protection hosted on 24 November 2021 organised to help businesses address distributed data challenges and secure business-ready intelligence.

The companies explained that while data is every organisation’s competitive advantage, harnessing, protecting and securing it for insights and innovation often proves easier said than done.

Obsidian referred to the financial and health sectors and said legacy systems and stringent regulatory and security requirements may hamper sharing and analysis of data for insights.

Retailers may have their data siloed across legacy systems, new acquisitions and supply chains, making it difficult to access and use data effectively with the increased data protection requirements.

The webinar offered valuable insight to users on how to overcome architectural design flaws that hamper optimal data use and security and simplify access and protection of any data, across any cloud, anywhere.

The virtual session showed businesses how to best address some of the challenges experienced when implementing a data protection strategy and platform within a growing, hybrid cloud environment.

“We need to reduce the lack of data integrity and confidentiality and enable faster and simpler data availability to get more accurate insights, while still protecting the data.” informed Grant Bingham, Managing Director of the Obsidian Groups sister company Autumn Leaf.

Obsidian has successfully entrenched its value proposition as an essential technical services partner within numerous verticals, including the highly influential financial services industry.

Muggie van Staden, MD and CEO of Obsidian Systems, says, “Data is the new currency and any business, no matter what industry vertical or sector they operate in, must have the capability to not only access and extract data securely, but also use this data strategically. Businesses must be able to gain insight from the data despite the need to protect it … the data must provide an advantage and empower the businesses with the ability to make the right decision, at the right time. The adaptation to AI and integration of this technology is to be expected and those businesses that position themselves to leverage this integration will gain competitive advantage – there is no doubt about that.”

“We are very proud to have collaborated with our industry partners to show how core infrastructure technology, like Cloud Pak for Data, can make a critical difference to businesses in their efforts to protect, secure, capture and manage data. We are talking about seamless delivery of data fabric for organisations, and we are encouraged by the desire of organisations to improve their data management capability. This can only empower businesses and help them drive value across the entire organisation.”