As cyberthreats continue to proliferate and data privacy takes on first-order importance for many enterprises, data protection has become one of IT’s most critical functions.
Yet, the backup and storage teams that play a key role in data protection often lack the tools and headcount they need to (a) ensure data resiliency/recoverability and (b), demonstrate to customers and other stakeholders that critical data is truly protected and recoverable.
It is under these circumstances that backup and storage operators typically explore Bocada’s automated backup monitoring platform, view a product demo, and fall in love with Bocada’s automated backup reporting capabilities.
From there, there is some internal selling that often must happen before operators can bring the tool home. To convince management to approve the purchase, backup and storage teams typically build a business case that expands the value proposition beyond the obvious operational/day-to-day improvements.
Here are the three central pillars Bocada sees most often in successful business cases (consistently borne out in long-term enterprise customer deployments), along with specific drivers, considerations, and related success stories.
1. Automate, Centralize, And Save
Key Drivers:
- Automate data collection, reporting, alerting, and ticketing. Ensure these critical activities happen reliably while improving efficiency.
- Centralize reporting for multiple backup and storage tools onto one single-pane customizable dashboard.
- Reduce manual effort from up to six hours per day to just minutes per day, freeing up time for higher-value activities. (Try our interactive time/cost savings estimator to see your estimated savings from using Bocada.)
- Identify and remove duplicate and expired backups to save on cloud/on-prem storage costs.
- Rebalance storage across devices to optimize storage expense, using storage utilization reports.
- Identify and remediate unexpected (and costly) spikes in cloud storage consumption using cloud storage utilization reports.
- Eliminate costs related to maintaining and updating homegrown tools and/or multiple monitoring tools.
Questions to Consider:
- How much time does my backup and storage team spend monitoring/reporting on our backup environment?
- How many different reporting tools and/or siloed processes do we use to report on the multiple backup products in our environment?
- How much time is required to manually consolidate data from different reporting tools into a single report?
- What are the consequences if any our manual reporting processes fail to happen due to human error?
- How much time/effort is required to stay on top of alerts and manage incident tickets for issues that require remediation?
- How much do we spend on cloud/on-prem storage for expired or duplicate backups?
- What storage reporting do we have today (if any) to identify and remediate sudden spikes in cloud storage utilization?
- What are the engineering costs and other business costs (including opportunity costs) associated with maintaining and updating our existing monitoring solutions?
Relevant Case Studies:
- Global MSP Saves Six Hours Per Day With Backup Automation
- Major Hospital Group Reduces Backup Capacity Needs By 50% with Bocada
- Bocada Helps MSP Erase Time Spent On Daily Backup Reports
- Global Electronics Brand Uses Bocada to Drive Cloud Backup Savings & Operational Efficiencies
2. Improve Data Protection
Key Drivers:
- Automatically identify unprotected data (with no backup policy).
- Cut time to remediation through alerting and automated incident ticketing.
- Improve backup success rates and data recoverability across an entire complex backup environment (e.g., multi-cloud/hybrid/on-prem environment with multiple backup products).
- Prevent catastrophic data loss in the event of ransomware attacks, mitigating reputational damage, customer loss, business downtime, and regulatory penalties.
Questions to Consider:
- What are my current backup success rates across my entire backup environment?
- How much data in my environment does not have any backup policy? (i.e., outside of the scope of traditional backup success/failure reporting)
- How long does it currently take for my team to discover and remediate backup errors? How does that affect our data resiliency and recoverability?
- Even if my organization’s cybersecurity efforts are excellent, could human error still result in a data breach?
- Did You Know: 74% of all breaches include the human element through error, privilege misuse, use of stolen credentials or social engineering. (2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report)
- How great is the incidence and magnitude of ransomware attacks and/or data breaches affecting companies in our industry?
- Did You Know: 24% of all breaches [in 2023] involved ransomware. Ransomware is present in more than 62% of all incidents committed by organized crime actors. (2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report)
- What is my organization’s best strategy for our data following a ransomware attack and/or major disaster?
- Did You Know: The mean recovery cost for organizations that pay the ransom in a ransomware attack is $2.6M. The mean recovery cost for organizations that restore data from backups was just $1.62M. (Sophos, The State of Ransomware 2023)
- Did You Know: 45% of organizations that used backups to restore their data following a ransomware attack recovered from the attack within one week, compared to just 39% of those that paid ransoms to get their data back. (Sophos, The State of Ransomware 2023)
Sophos, The State of Ransomware 2023
Relevant Case Studies:
- Bocada Helps MSP Achieve 72% Reduction in Backup Failure Rates
- Peru’s Largest Bank Transforms its Backup Management With Bocada
3. Simplify and Improve Compliance/SLA Reporting
Key Drivers:
- Configure purpose-built custom reports for each audit group, customer, or other stakeholder group.
- Automate compliance reports on a scheduled basis or generate on-demand instantly for auditors. No more days/weeks scrambling to get auditors what they need.
- Reduce disruptions and interruptions to operations caused by sudden audit requests.
- Give auditors, customers, and other stakeholders complete confidence that their data is protected and recoverable.
Questions to Consider:
- How many different compliance or SLA audits are my backup and storage team(s) responsible for? How much of the team’s time and effort is required to respond to these?
- What high-value activities and obligations are being compromised when we are forced to respond to compliance audit requests?
- What are the risks associated with non-compliance (with data protection regulations) or failure to meet SLAs in our industry? (E.g., monetary penalties, reputational damage, customer cancellations, etc.)
- Did You Know: A single GDPR violation can result in up to €20M in fines
- What do auditors, stakeholders, and customers think of our current compliance record, reporting process and response times? Do they instill or undermine confidence?
Relevant Case Studies:
- Major Hospital Group Reduces Backup Capacity Needs By 50% with Bocada
- Peru’s Largest Bank Transforms its Backup Management With Bocada
- MSP Uses Bocada to Enable Backup Monitoring & Transparency for The Cloud
Transform Backup Operations into a Profit Center
IT is typically viewed as a cost center in many enterprises, chiefly responsible for managing costs.
However, when data protection improves, becomes more efficient, and is easily demonstrable through improved compliance/SLA reporting – through Bocada’s automated monitoring, for example — there’s something magical that often happens.
IT teams responsible for those gains begin to be seen as profit centers – or primary enablers of business growth and profitability.
Business teams launch more products, deploy more technology/assets, sign more customers, and generally transact more business with confidence — knowing that their data protection function can scale without bending or breaking.
For the practitioners to come so far – often from a subsistent and reactive state to actively shaping an organization’s growth story – that itself is juice that’s worth the squeeze.
About Bocada
Bocada LLC, a global IT Automation leader, delivers backup reporting and monitoring solutions that give enterprises complete visibility into their backup performance. Bocada provides insight into complex backup environments, enabling IT organizations to save time, automate ongoing reporting activities, and reduce costs. With the largest installed customer base in the Fortune 500, Bocada is the world’s leading provider of backup reporting automation. Request an enterprise/MSP product demo today.