It’s 2017. The word ‘backup’, in terms of the computing, has been around for a while. With its first use in 1965, it’s more than 50 years old. That being said, the backup that we know is now virtually unrecognisable from what it once was in the very early days.

As data has transformed, grown in size and become regulated, an awful lot has changed in how we manage it. Back in those days, storing – and protecting – picture albums was an arduous task of transferring photos from a camera to a computer before burning them onto CDs or external hard disks…and then buying more storage and repeating the process as space ran out.

Thankfully, today people no longer have to deal with this complex, painstaking process; they snap a few photos on our phone and…voila…they’re automatically backed up and managed in the cloud. Any photo is easily and instantly accessible from any device, anywhere in the world.

>See also: Are businesses still taking risks with back up?

When it comes to backup, cloud represents a new era liberating consumers and enterprises alike by delivering universal access and automation over their applications. And with data continuing to increase at an unprecedented rate, cloud becomes more important than ever. The IDC, for example, predicts that worldwide data levels will reach a staggering 180 Zetabytes by 2025.

Unfortunately, most businesses are slow to fully embrace the cloud world and still have to deal with the complexity of managing data that we, as consumers, have long forgotten. And if we thought we had it bad, managing business data is infinitely more complicated than a few family photo albums.

Businesses have databases that are constantly changing and teams need to access both current and past versions of their data – all while following stringent requirements around data security.

Introducing cloud data management

Backup and recovery, until very recently, was an extremely stilted market. It served as an insurance policy rather than a usable business asset. From a CIO’s perspective, it was deployed in the hopes that they would never need to use it. Think about it — enterprises would only see the return on their investment in the case of a disaster.

Cloud data management, on the other hand, redefines the backup and recovery market into a value creating function, where data is securely managed and orchestrated to wherever it is needed, whenever.

>See also: Is your backup hindering your company’s digital transformation?

In a nutshell, cloud data management orchestrates mission critical application data across private and public clouds while delivering data management functions such as backup, disaster recovery, archival, compliance, search, analytics, and copy data management in a single, run-anywhere platform.

Imagine having all your data as easily available to an analytics application in the cloud, as it is to your local test/dev team. This opens up a world of possibilities for CIOs to use their data to create value without the limitations of infrastructure.

Ransomware, ransomware, ransomware

One example of the value cloud data management creates is as a safety net against sophisticated ransomware attacks. It’s hard to avoid the ransomware epidemic that’s been hitting UK organisations: everywhere you look, there are warnings and statistics about the sheer number of its victims.

This new world of ever-sophisticated cyber attacks against businesses, has added another string to cloud data management’s bow.

>See also: Six data trends for 2017

With an effective cloud data management solution, ransomware can be reduced to merely a minor inconvenience. Attacks are inevitable – we know that. But if you have a system that is validated and can be quickly and easily restored. You not only avoid paying the ransom, but you also get the ability to return to ‘business as usual’ in record time.

Long gone are the days where backup was used just for compliance purposes – it’s no longer just an insurance policy.

In today’s data rich and cyber attack prevalent world, data protection has become business critical. Whether your company is big or small, investing wisely in the right level of protection for your data will enable your business to run after the unexpected happens.

Sourced by Alex Raistrick, director WEUR at Rubrik