Data Management, Analytics & AI

  • Ransomware Attacks are Everyone’s Problem

    GettyImages-1273930670It can be easy to think, “That sounds horrible! But it probably won’t happen to me.” From getting into a fender bender, to spilling ketchup on your new white shirt, to… ransomware attacks. Believing ransomware attacks will only happen to “somebody else” can put your organization at a huge risk. On a much larger scale than buying car insurance or bringing an extra shirt, taking precautions against ransomware attacks can save your organization millions of dollars, as well as employee confidence, customer trust, and more.

    Ransomware is a type of malware, spread by methods such as phishing. It encrypts the files of a user or organization and blocks access to these files until a ransom is paid. Statistically, it is more likely than not that your organization will be met with a ransomware attack in the next 12 months, as attacks are becoming more and more common. According to ESG research, 70% of respondents experienced, “At least one attempted ransomware attack within the last year.”* Cyber criminals are getting more creative in their attacks, so it is crucial to have an equally thoughtful protection plan.

    It pays to do the proper research and narrow in on the data protection and storage solutions that can help you plan for a quick and reliable recovery after a ransomware attack. These solutions include features like tamper-proof backup images (a.k.a. immutability) and network-isolated disaster recovery (e.g., air gap). Organizations should also take into consideration the solution’s speed, ease of management, reliability, etc.

    To make it easier to narrow in on the right solution for your organization, Enterprise Strategy Group has evaluated and documented these features for many solutions, and “Why This Matters” to the business, in a variety of recently published reports. If you’d like to learn more about how to reliably recover from a ransomware attack, and about “Why This Matters” for your business – check out these recently published ESG Validation reports: Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery with CyberSense and IBM Cyber Resilience Solutions. These reports are designed to give organizations an independent perspective of a product or solution and help you to better understand the value propositions.

    Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) is an IT analyst, research, validation, and strategy firm that gives the global IT community access to market intelligence and actionable insight. The Validation Team creates assets, such as Economic and Technical Validation Reports, videos, webinars and more, that help to communicate the technological and economic value of IT products and solutions.

    *Source: ESG Research Report, Tape’s Place in an Increasingly Cloud-based IT Landscape, January 2021. 

  • In this Data Protection Conversations video, I talk with Matt Waxman of Cohesity about:

    • The latest and greatest from Cohesity
    • How customers can “unlock value” from data through intelligent data management
    • What topics are top-of-mind for customers and partners

    For more videos in the series, please visit: https://www.esg-global.com/coverage/data-protection-conversations.

  • Over the last few years, there has been a disconnect by which organizations rely on their SaaS vendors to protect, back up, and recover their data when they should actually perform their own backups. Younger organizations have more faith in their SaaS providers, while older organizations have the experience to back up and protect their own data. Some of the bigger names in the as-a-service industry are mission-critical to countless organizations, but they still require organizations to put their own strategies in place.

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  • Business intelligence is the key to data-driven success according to new Enterprise Strategy Group research—with organizations on the leading-edge of data analytics usage revealing they enjoy a variety of competitive advantages.

    See the data behind these trends and more with this Infographic, The Path to Data Leadership: Embracing Business Intelligence to Achieve Data-driven Success.


    For more information or to discuss these findings with an analyst, please contact us.
  • In this video, I talk data protection with Joe Noonan of Unitrends. Our topics of discussion included:

    • Recent changes to the data protection landscape
    • How the Unitrends strategy has adapted
    • Recommendations for end-users

    For more from my Data Protection Conversations series, please visit: https://www.esg-global.com/coverage/data-protection-conversations

  • The Path to Data Leadership

    Data teams and developers continue to serve as the lynchpin to businesses, overcoming shortcomings associated with more rapidly and reliably gaining insight from growing data sets. With improving data analytics for real-time business intelligence (BI) and customer insight consistently ranking as one of the business priorities driving significant technology spending, how are organizations enabling more end-users to actually leverage data? Skills gaps, collaboration, and accessibility have created several barriers for democratizing analytics across organizations, and pressure is being placed on data and software teams to make business intelligence easier to leverage and consume. But with the dynamic nature of the business being what it is today and the constant shifting of priorities, timeliness of delivery and accessibility of simplified analytics are being scrutinized. Embedded analytics is increasingly becoming the answer.

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  • AI Adoption Trends

    While AI is still considered nascent, the impact it is having on organizations that are embracing it early and often is profound. This serves as a key component to why organizations continue placing bets on AI. Even as skills gaps remain when it comes to incorporating AI into the business, organizations simply cannot afford to wait in adopting the technology as they risk being disrupted by the competition using AI today. With the rise of AI tools that simplify and automate several, if not all aspects of the AI lifecycle, expect adoption of AI to continue exploding for years to come.


    If you’re interested in learning more or would like to discuss these findings with an analyst, please contact us.
  • Gaining Value from AI

    Organizations continue to prioritize AI investments with a goal of achieving a more data-centric future. While business objectives point to several areas where AI can help improve businesses both internally and externally, time to value continues to be scrutinized as organizations make massive investments in people, processes, and technology in support of AI initiatives. Opportunities to reduce time to value continue to pave the way for AI technology vendors that can help simplify the adoption and use of AI technology to support a growing number of use cases throughout the business.

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  • Though the cyclical AI lifecycle is riddled with complexity, the last mile of AI is proving to be the greatest challenge for organizations in their quest to leverage AI. Between diverse and distributed application environments, the rate at which growing data sets change and create data drift, and the dynamic needs of the business, several contributing factors lead to organizations suffering from AI deployment challenges. Both new and mature businesses leveraging AI continue to prioritize opportunities to simplify the last mile of AI—deploying AI into production—with a goal of reducing the amount of time it takes to get from trained model to production. This has paved the way for the emergence of technology to better enable businesses to deploy, track, manage, and iterate on a growing number of ML models in production environments.

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  • The State of Data Lakes

    As organizations strive to utilize more data, data lakes are increasingly becoming an attractive option with limitless potential. Data lakes enable organizations to unite disparate data silos and make data more accessible across the business by serving as a centralized repository or collection of data, regardless of shape, speed, or size. Organizations can then leverage a data lake to feed other data-centric tools or utilize tools that sit on top of a data lake to work with the data in-place, such as query optimization solutions that can minimize data movement while enabling improved processing and analysis. And the economic advantages cannot be understated as organizations increasingly leverage cost-effective cloud storage and minimize operating costs through the consolidation of infrastructures silos.


    If you’re interested in learning more or would like to discuss these findings with an analyst, please contact us.
  • SAP Sapphire Now 2021 Review

    GettyImages-953143284As with any event, Sapphire 2021 was loaded with product launches, updates, and delighted customers who shared how they are working with SAP to better leverage data that can enable them to adapt to a dynamic business environment. At the root of the keynote and breakout sessions was a common theme that likely resonated with most, if not all, attendees and that was the idea of extending the value of working together as a community to the business.

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  • Insights from VeeamON 2021(Video)

    In this video, I share my perspectives on VeeamON 2021.