Simplifying the enterprise with DaaS

According to database vendor Oracle, for every database in production, eight to 12 copies exist sitting idle in non-production environments such as development, test, backup and archive. Think about that from a tier-1 enterprise’s perspective — it has thousands of databases and therefore multi-terabytes (and even petabytes) of data. That’s a major challenge for any CIO, particularly with budgets shrinking and customer demands growing.

So how does a CIO increase productivity across the enterprise and simultaneously decrease — or at least maintain — IT spend when this much data is being stored? Many are turning to the buzz term of big data analytics. Sure, it works for some organisations, but creating value for all employees (and consequently customers) while driving business outcomes is difficult when a long series of procedures stands in the way.

Data as a service (DaaS) software, including data virtualisation, is fast becoming a strategic IT solution to address the big data trend. DaaS software provides an alternative to the complexities and costs of traditional methods of application delivery and copy-data provisioning. Enterprises are using it both on-premises and in the cloud to take data out of development much faster for the benefit of the entire organisation, not only the IT department.

Why? Because it enables a 50% faster response to business demands around application projects, therefore freeing up 90% of what would normally be reserved for capex and opex to be used for more strategic innovation projects within IT — this can help drive business value back into the organisation versus simply spinning up new infrastructure and keeping the lights on.

But while data virtualisation provides this value, going down this relatively foreign path can be difficult for CIOs that haven’t explored the option before. The first major step requires a concise set of business goals to determine the role data virtualisation will play; typically, it is deployed to save money on storage, accelerate application development, and improve data protection and production support.

But the real value lies in data agility; making copies of data available in minutes (as opposed to hours for traditional methods of storage) so it can be accessed faster and on demand at any time. By rapidly provisioning, refreshing and resetting data, development is accelerated, and therefore cost and strain on resources is reduced.

Whatever the solution, it must be versatile enough to cater for the full enterprise IT landscape, not just the IT department. It must also integrate with and support existing storage and operating systems in order to create a streamlined environment that branches right across the enterprise. In short, it must be a futureproof solution to ensure the organisation isn’t locked to a certain system, giving the CIO much greater flexibility in other short- and long-term investments.

Chris Poulos leads Delphix’s Asia-Pacific and Japan operations and has more than 25 years’ experience in IT enterprise. Prior to his current role, Poulos held leadership roles at Cloudera, F5 Networks and Trend Micro, and senior positions at IBM, Microsoft and Lotus.