There is no doubt among South African companies that data is crucial to them today and tomorrow. Even though analysis of information has always been fundamental for business prosperity, the emerging age of digital data is opening many new doors of opportunity. Tapping into this new vein of success has been front of mind for many local enterprises, said Servaas Venter, Sales Director for  Data Protection Solutions at Dell EMC South Africa:

“We are seeing customers realise more and more that data is the lifeblood of their company and without data, they won’t exist.”

Venter will be one of the presenters at the currently running Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2018, which is being held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, from 17-20 September 2018. During his presentation, he will discuss the need to secure data against both criminal and operational risks. Due to the complexity of modern IT environments, there are many pitfalls where companies could be hurt through data losses. No wonder that data safety is a high priority for businesses.

“That’s becoming top of mind for most of our customers today. We are seeing operational and criminal risks go hand in hand. And customers are looking for solutions where, alongside the operations approach of protecting data, they can also attack the malware problem. So the easier we can make it for customers to deflect outside intrusions and protect data against operational problems, the better for the customer and the more cost effective for them as well,” he continues.

Yet, as mentioned earlier, complexity is often a major barrier to this problem. A typical business today will have legacy systems, virtualisation and next-generation apps as part of its technology investments. That introduces a complexity by typically having a vendor in each space. Venter notes that research shows, a single vendor approach is most effective for protection, performance and costs. In fact, if a vendor cannot do that, it changes matters quite a bit:

“When you look at a vendor, can they address the problem end to end? If they can’t, it becomes a point solution and becomes lost in the corporate world.”

During his presentation, Venter will look at how to get it all - performance, security and cost - by selecting the right vendor. Giving a preview, he advises companies to look at the vendor’s heritage, whether they come out of the right background to meet the many moving parts of a business’ technology, and whether they respect the individuality of each business’ environment:

“Most customers can have similar problems, but there is complexity with each. They have to have the assurance that the vendor can address that through a strong consulting practice so they can identify how this customer is unique, what they need and address those problems.”

For companies only starting this journey, Venter suggests a closer look at their overall IT landscape, starting with endpoint devices and their operational ability to recover data. They should also look at what their peers are doing and which vendors they engage with.

If a company’s data is not secure, both from internal mistakes and external attacks, it is truly gambling with its future and also inhibiting its ability to use data insights even better and faster. Yet it doesn’t take much to get ahead of the risks and start enjoying the fruits of today’s most crucial business asset.

To learn more, be sure to visit the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2018 and attend Venter’s presentation. The task of securing your enterprise’s data is not nearly as cumbersome and costly as you might think.