Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS)
What is Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS)?
Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS) is a cloud-based or web-delivered service enabling organizations to protect their data and applications, securing their network and providing recovery options per the desired SLA and delivered via a consumption-based model.
Why is Data Protection as a Service important?
As primary data volumes swell due to modern cloud and edge applications, enterprises must keep pace with backup capacity that is often required to be 10 to 50 times the size of that primary data. With the increasing sophistication of security attacks, and as the data environment changes, relying on legacy data protection technologies makes this complex and expensive to manage and operate.
Data Protection as a Service allows organizations to reduce risk by combining all data protection efforts into one modern platform and delivering them through one vendor via a consumption-based model.
How does Data Protection as a Service work?
DPaaS enables enterprises to shift from owning and maintaining backup infrastructure to simply accessing and utilizing it in a pay-as-you-go model. They choose how much compute, networking, and storage they might need based on previous workloads, with the ability to scale when demand changes. They also specify encryption, retention, and security policies as part of their lease and leave backup storage planning and deployment to the vendor.
What are the benefits of Data Protection as a Service?
With DPaaS, organizations can consolidate backup with primary data center storage systems, remote office servers and storage devices, and end-user devices, which offers several advantages:
• Reduced capital expenditure: By only paying for the backup capacity you use, you transform data protection into an operational expense.
• Scalability: You can scale resources on-demand as business needs change, with the flexibility to respond as demand shifts.
• More resources for higher-value tasks: Because DPaaS provides management, backup, DR, and archive from edge to cloud via a centrally managed, cloud-based service, IT organizations can shift away from mundane infrastructure management tasks.
• Reduced complexity: Deploying data protection directly to the cloud provides centralized control across business units and data types and helps you avoid changing your existing workflows.
• Improved reliability: Using modern technology and improved visibility enables you to track data trends and gain the reliability you need to reduce risk and enhance performance.
• No vendor lock-in: With Data Protection as a Service, you can use your own configuration and customize your environment.
• Quick start: With DPaaS, there’s nothing to install or tune to get up and running. It’s available immediately; you just need to determine management policies and backup schedules.
What are some potential drawbacks to Data Protection as a Service?
There are some additional considerations within a service arrangement that can add up on your monthly bill.
Complex billing
Unless the billing metrics are well defined, as the data volumes increase the cost advantages of DPaaS will be neutralized.
Cloud egress charges
Moving data from the cloud back to your premises can incur egress charges.
Minimum monthly commitments
Some subscriptions come with a set minimum of terabytes of storage per month. Varying from that level can mean “renting” capacity that your organization doesn’t typically need.
Refresh cost
As new technologies arise, vendors adapt their configurations to accommodate the changes, and those costs are not visible to the end user. They will likely be passed on as a subscription price increase.
Loss of control
Because data is moved outside of your environment and into the control of a service provider, you need to learn as much as possible about the cloud backup provider's equipment, physical security procedures, data protection process, and fiscal viability.
HPE and Data Protection as a Service
HPE offers industry-leading cloud service solutions for data protection to help you modernize backup and recovery, protect against data loss and ransomware threats, and recover from any disaster. These services give customers the flexibility to modernize data protection—from rapid recovery to ransomware protection to long-term data retention—either on-premises or in the public cloud with operational simplicity, meeting every SLA at the right cost.
The HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform offers an end-to-end backup solution complete with the hardware and backup software, along with services that free up your IT staff from doing routine backup tasks and capacity planning. With HPE GreenLake, you get the simplicity, agility, and economics of public cloud with the security and performance benefits of an on-premises backup environment.
The platform provides capacity provisioning for storing or protecting your data whether it lives on-premises or in hybrid or cloud environments, with an instant-on, consumption-based backup solution. It also offers built-in deduplication and automated capacity scaling to optimize your storage efficiently and keep your data protected at the level your business needs to remain resilient. And you can leverage metering technology and management services to run the infrastructure and safeguard your data for you, along with the control and security of storing your data on-premises or in a co-located data center.