Astronomical data growth: See how software-defined secondary storage tames it

[MUSIC PLAYING] Enterprise backup used to be tied to hardware, with all the hassles and upgrade cycles that that entails. But in today's world of ever-increasing demand from the business and ever-growing data regulation, that's just not an effective solution anymore. Today, we're talking to Adrian Moir from Quest Software about what the shift to software-defined systems means for business. Adrian, why is this important? Why the move away from hardware? Well, two main reasons really. One is flexibility, the other is cost. The flexibility issue with software allows you to actually put that storage solution wherever you need it to be rather than be tied to a physical piece or physical type of hardware. So that makes it far more flexible for today's solutions as we move towards a cloud-enabled technology stack. And as far as cost goes, having software-defined secondary storage allows us to actually reduce the ongoing costs. So when you're looking at maybe changing your hardware after a three or five-year period, you no longer have to buy the hardware and the software again. All you have to do is just rebuy the hardware, and you can keep the software. So the return on investment is much more acceptable. And so what's the main driver? Is it cost? Is it regulation? Is it flexibility? Would you believe, it's all of those things these days. Certainly regulation bears out, as we've seen over the past couple of years. Regulations are getting harder and harder to meet. And, of course, flexibility is one key area that people want. And costs are always being pushed back. So having something that's far more flexible, more cost effective, but still being able to maintain those regulatory requirements is the kind of thing that people are looking for. And is it also allowing businesses to change how they look and use their backup? Certainly. It enables them to actually think about where they want to put their data and also be able to store data for longer, as well. So as those regulatory requirements kind of start to bite, it allows them to actually keep more data for longer in the places that they really want to store it. Looking in a bit more detail, what sort of things should people be looking for from the software solutions? Well, I think in general, if you're looking for something in this particular place, where you're looking at reducing the amount of storage being used, reducing the amount of cost, and actually having multiple copies of your data sets-- well, that's one of the main drivers around keeping a regulatory compliance is to be able to actually offsite data sets. So the ability to have optimized data movement into cloud or into alternative office locations is something that's much sought after. Is there anything missing, do you think, from a lot of products, which customers really need? Well, there are a few things that are missing these days. One of them is that ability to be able to deploy anywhere-- being able to be very, very flexible in terms of constructs, being able to move data in an optimized fashion. Keeping that data movement secure, as well, and keeping track of where everything is, all in one go, enables people to actually look forward and do the things that are actually more consistent with their business requirements. And presumably, open standards are also important here. Very much so. Being open and agnostic allows for a greater diverse application use. So rather than actually being tied to one particular solution, we rather look at it in a more agnostic fashion and say, we're there to help people to work with their current solutions and expand what they have and improve what they have going forward. So Adrian, what about the specific benefits of Core Store? One of the major benefits of Core Store is the ability for it not be tethered to a specific piece of hardware anymore. So this offers some benefits to customers around cost savings. But also, it gives them the ability to actually install the product on any type of hardware, so they can have their own preferred flavor of hardware that they get from their own supplier. They can install it on virtual machines. And it can be installed in the cloud, as well. So now we have the ability to actually be far more flexible about the type of storage and the type of cost associated with storing backup data. And looking forward perhaps three to five years, do you think there'll still be a mix of people relying on hardware backup? Or do you think software is going to win the day? I think there's still going to be some, but I think a lot of people are going to move towards that software-defined storage model. It is more flexible. It is going to be where the future lies. And as we start to look forward to different storage-based technologies, certainly in cloud it has a lot of things to offer in terms of scalability and the ability to actually just store more data for longer. Adrian Moir, thank you very much. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]