Awaiting a verdict on the on-prem versus all-cloud debate, most enterprises will employ both. This presents tricky data protection and recovery problems, according to Beth Phalen (pictured, right), president of the Data Protection Division at Dell EMC, Dell Technologies Inc.’s infrastructure group.

“One of the things we talk about is people moving a way from data centers to centers of data,” Phalen said.

Phalen and Jim Clancy, senior vice president of sales of the Data Protection Division at Dell EMC, spoke with host John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during Dell EMC World in Las Vegas, Nevada. (* Disclosure below.) 

Data distributed across on-prem, cloud and edge environments demands distributed services for governing, analyzing and protecting it, Phalen explained.

The so called “move-to-cloud” appears circular for many businesses, which see benefits in leaving some data on-prem, according to Clancy. “They don’t want to be handcuffed on where they can actually protect their data,” he said.

Cloud border toll

Keeping costs low is one difficult problem caused by mobilizing data between environments. Dell EMC’s new Integrated Data Protection Appliance controls cost by deduplicating redundant data 55 to one, Phalen said. The appliance is capable of end-to-end boxed backup in less than three hours, she stated.

A second Dell EMC announcement that might complement this is Cloud Data Protection, which focuses disaster recovery in the cloud; after recovery, applications can be re-enabled in the cloud without having to bring the data back on-prem, she said.

Flexibility and transference of data (and data protection) is crucial as on-prem and cloud both have benefits, and most chief information officers will not want to compromise, Phalen stated.

“It’s not in one place anymore. It’s not a lake. It’s all over the place. I think the term “data fog” is going to start coming into the conversation,” she said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Dell EMC World 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell EMC World. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial influence on content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE