As the importance of data as a corporate asset grows, data management becomes ever more critical. Data is the new oil, not just in terms of its value, but as the vital fuel for AI and the other core elements of digital business.

Effective execution is just as important as a strong data management strategy. Taking practical steps to deliver immediate tangible cost, time and management benefits maintains momentum and focus. Which is where these four hacks for data management in a hybrid cloud world come in. Ideally, they should be implemented as part of a wider coherent data management strategy, but they have the advantage of delivering substantial benefits in their own right.

Understanding where your business is in its data management journey is a positive first step. The overhead of establishing and maintaining effective data management may be daunting, particularly for businesses which are starting from a low base. The good news is that there is plenty of technology out there to help, from automated discovery tools to the built-in data management capabilities that are increasingly a part of enterprise platforms. Logicalis UK have extensive expertise and experience in helping organisations on their data management journey.

Logicalis UK will give customers greater value from Oracle’s comprehensive offering – with more systems and better advice on boosting productivity.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the rise of ‘Good Enough’ IT and the idea that in the current climate organisations may be looking to sweat their assets for longer than usual and why this is perhaps not the best idea. Well since I published the blog, I have spoken to a couple of companies about their architecture and one of the common threads in both conversations was that they both had legacy SPARC Solaris estates and they were a challenge for them to manage.

A decade ago when cloud was beginning to take off, the predictions were that we would all be 100% in a cloud within 10 years. Next cloud was so good that one wasn’t enough and so multi-cloud was the way to go. After that, the prediction changed again and hybrid cloud was going to be the architecture of choice for the next 10 years. Today, with a whole raft of second-generation cloud services coming from both the cloud providers and technology vendors, it looks like we are in fact heading to a hybrid multi-cloud world.

Most industry data suggests that the lion’s share of sales in the HCI market are going to Nutanix or VMware, so why consider anything else? Well if you’re thinking about building a hybrid cloud, read on…

To say it has been an unusual year is an understatement, and we still have a lot to face in the coming months; one of those being a new period of austerity and potential recession. When times get hard, organisations will naturally review their budgets and projects they have on the roadmap, and tough decisions will have to be made about where to make investments. Now for many people that will be investing in things such as business continuity and remote working solutions to prepare for the “new normal”, but what happens to the other projects?

This Sunday marks the 8th year of World Backup Day. What began as a light-hearted campaign to encourage end-users to create secure copies of their treasured photos and files is slowing morphing into a message for the business community: without data there is no business.