Globally, business leaders are leaning into — and leveraging — data to accelerate growth and gain competitive advantage. As industry moves more deeply into an ‘age of insight,’ where innovation and customer growth are interlocked with data collection, protection, retrieval, and analysis, secure and comprehensive backup is essential.

Backup and recovery need a radical rethink because most of the legacy solutions commonly found in businesses today were designed over a decade ago. Back then, backup was a low-cost insurance policy for data. Companies used incumbent vendors and patched together solutions, trying to minimise costs by spreading data across different infrastructure and media.

It took 40 years for the world to create the nearly 500 million apps in existence today. Yet such is the pace of change that the same number is expected to be created in the next three years alone. Just as apps have become essential tools in our daily lives, they have become vital interfaces for businesses to interact with their customers.

Being an IT manager was a very different career before the advent of cloud-based services. When it came to adding or replacing infrastructure, you had only one option: buy the latest hardware or software. So, IT would receive its budget and go off and buy the biggest and best kit it could.

Edge Computing is seen by many as the next revolution for processing data. Advancements in technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G will fuel Edge Computing and make it a reality for almost every business. It brings processing power to everyday objects and incredibly detailed analytics that will enable organisations of every shape, size and sector to develop compelling new propositions that are more efficient and deliver a better experience for customers, patients and citizens.