March is a special month for the backup and recovery industry because on March 31st we celebrated World´s Backup Day. A day to remember how important it is to protect data and keep systems and computers secure. Over the last few months, this importance has been increasingly emphasized due to various factors or agents—circumstances that initially seem like ordinary industry occurrences, but later lead to some instability, ultimately resulting in significant alteration.

If we were to look for a name for this concatenation of events, we would find that it is practically the definition of what in nature is called a "perfect storm", a meteorological event aggravated by a rare combination of circumstances that is a combination of events that produces an especially powerful result.  

In this article we will address three of these factors that are impacting the IT industry: cyber-attacks, new directives and, perhaps the most unexpected but quite impactful, Broadcom's acquisition of VMWare. 

Sailing the Perfect Storm – Act One 

The first recurring factor impacting the IT industry is ransomware, which began to gain relevance during COVID-19 and has continued to increasingly impact the industry. However, for various reasons, a large number of companies around the world still do not believe that they are targets for ransomware attacks. Cyberattacks have become increasingly common and can have serious consequences; no business is immune to an attack," said Prentiss Donohue, Executive Vice President, OpenText Cybersecurity, it’s not a matter of IF but WHEN. 

Despite the majority of businesses believing that their security budgets cover all their bases, yet over half of the enterprises plan to increase their security budgets. 

And this is where OpenText Data Protector can once again offer the last line of defense to customers. Backup and recovery solutions represent the missing link in cybersecurity strategy.

Data Protector has adopted a secure approach to protect backups by employing a centralized backup process with a built-in security model. This allows administrators to implement security measures across their entire backup environment. With built-in advanced disaster recovery capabilities, administrators can create disaster recovery images from existing backups. This enables organizations to streamline the task of restoring the full mission-critical system.

Some of the latest enhancements include AI anomaly detection and multifactor authentication, which enhance previous capabilities such as secure peering, airgap capabilities, and immutability.

Sailing the Perfect Storm – Act Two 

The second factor is a consequence of previous one. The rise of cyber threats has reached a worrying dimension – various incidents in recent years have more than clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of companies to cyberattacks. In response some regions, like the European Union, adopted the Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2), which aims to more effectively protect critical infrastructure such as network and information systems.  

Therefore, this new directive, which must become law in all EU member states by October 17, 2024, introduces a new factor requiring organizations to plan carefully and ensure business continuity through backup management and disaster recovery processes in case of major cyber incidents. Plans should include considerations for system recovery, emergency procedures, and the creation of a crisis response team, pressing companies to improve their cybersecurity strategies.

Sailing the Perfect Storm – Act Three 

Finally, the last factor that we will mention in today's article began at the end of 2022, when Broadcom announced the acquisition of VMware. This acquisition generated mixed feelings in the market, and although specialized analysts as well as the VMware ecosystem began to review the potential repercussions of this action from the outset, none could foresee the implications that unfolded in the following months.

During the following months, the strategy developed after the acquisition changed the industry through announcements of modification of existing agreements, the change of the channel program, the transition to a subscription model, or the price modification and even led EU antitrust regulators to ask about the changes. 

Since VMware leads the major virtualization technologies in terms of number of customers with around 44% of the market share, one could say it is a market standard, the aforementioned changes have a huge impact on the IT industry and It forces customers and channels to look beyond VMWare solutions, not only with respect to virtualization alternatives but also with respect to the backup and recovery solutions that can support these alternatives. 

OpenText Data Protector has long supported VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V with advanced capabilities: Data Protector and VMWare Demo. Additionally, it supports additional hypervisors through the add-on module, Data Protector for Cloud Workloads, which can work together with or independently of Data Protector. Watch video: Data Protector for Cloud Workloads General Overview.

Data Protector for Cloud Workloads is a modern, agentless backup and recovery solution for multiple virtualization platforms running on-premises and in the cloud and provides feature-rich backup and recovery options. It provides extended backup and recovery options for applications like Citrix, Nutanix, Proxmox, Oracle VM, etc. 

Summary 

Organizations face many disruptors when considering defense planning, including changing agreements, cyber-attacks, data explosion, new regulations, and more. OpenText solutions can help detect and prevent unexpected attacks. With Data Protector, organizations can significantly reduce the effects of a data breach and recover quickly, as they will have a last line of defense for any perfect storm that hits them.

Explore how OpenText Data Protector can help your organization to ensure data integrity and data protection. 

Request a free trial of OpenText Data Protector  

Learn more about Cloud data backup and restore  

Already a Data Protector customer? Learn what is new in the latest version. 

Read about data backup and resiliency  

Read what analysts say about Data Protector 

Read what a customer is saying about Data Protector 

Be sure to connect with OpenText on LinkedIn.

Keep up with the latest Tips & Info about Data Protector. 

Do you have an idea or Product Enhancement Request about Data Protector? Submit it in the Data Protector Idea Exchange. 

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this blog. Comment below.

The Online Community Team