Data. Data. Data! The drumbeat of the digital revolution has become steadily louder as data-driven businesses beat out their competitors. Pile on the COVID-19 pandemic, and the necessity to effectively access, manage and back up critical data resources across multiple locations has gone from market advantage to mission-critical task.

“Automation and use of clouds, multiple clouds, has really become of a supreme importance since COVID has started,” said David Floyer (pictured, right), co-founder and chief technology officer of Wikibon Inc. and host of theCUBE. “And that’s how it’s going to be from here on in; that’s not going to change.”

Floyer and Stu Miniman (left), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, discussed the importance of copy data management during a pre-show analysis as part of theCUBE’s coverage of the Actifio Data Driven event.  (* Disclosure below.)

One copy for access by all

Actifio created copy management as a business category when the company set out to solve the problem of redundant data sprawling across the organization. Ten years (and one pandemic) later, that data sprawl extends across a multicloud environment. And with work-from-home fast becoming work-from-anywhere, leveraging the cloud to provide fast, secure data access has become a priority.

One path to cloud adoption is the “lift-and-shift” strategy, where everything is moved from on-premises into the cloud. But that has limitations.

“What you want to be able to do is use the same databases, the same applications that you’re using at the moment — avoid that enormous, expensive cost of moving everything and then be able to operate on those databases using the cloud principles, the cloud object store, and have the same level of performance,” Floyer said.  

This concept was embedded in Actifio’s foundational, patented technologies, helping customers address the spiraling costs of copy data challenges to manage duplicate physical instances. It all means that development teams can work on fresh data without needing to make physical copies, requiring less storage and lending to more agile workflows.

Breaking data out of its silos requires the right tools. “You want to be able to access any data you want from anywhere and know that it’s the correct data, and move your business processes from asynchronous business processes to as synchronous as you can,” Floyer said. “And you can only do that with automation through real-time data management.”

The solution is to build a consistent data pipeline with a single point of truth, according to Floyer. “You have to have processes and procedures that identify the data, where it’s going to go and have, essentially, a managed data plan, which is taking it from where it is to where it needs to go, sharing the metadata across that fabric,” he said. “The less copies of the data that exist … then the less complicated the systems become.”

To that end, Actifio’s taken an “any cloud” approach to copy data management, expanding the portfolio with the recent launch of data protection services for Google Cloud’s Bare Metal Solution and technical validation and support for Oracle Cloud VMware Solution.

During this week’s Data Driven event, Miniman will be speaking with David Chang, co-founder and chief product officer at Actifio, to learn more about the company’s evolving architecture to address the challenges of scaling data protection through automated services. TheCUBE’s exclusive event coverage also includes an interview with Ash Ashutosh, Actifio’s founder, president and chief executive officer, and Scott Buckles, DataOps executive at IBM, to learn more about the partnerships within Actifio’s ecosystem supporting its multicloud integrations.

“When you understand the data, you understand the customer, you understand the need for the portfolio of solutions you have. Data can just be that key enabler,” Miniman said.

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Actifio Data Driven event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Actifio Data Driven event. Neither Actifio, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE