The way we work has been irrevocably altered by the Covid-19 pandemic, writes Mohammed Sayed, service delivery manager at DMP SA.
Flexible hours and working remotely have become increasingly mainstream, and the traditional geographical considerations around a workforce thus no longer apply. Businesses now have truly global workforces that could potentially be online and productive at any time of the day, any day of the year.
This makes true 24/7 support critical to operations, especially when it comes to backup and data management, as data is the lifeblood of the digital-first enterprise.
Always on, always connected
In a global, connected and digitally driven world, there is no such thing as business hours. Flexible work and teams spanning time zones means that people could potentially be online at any time of the day and could potentially experience IT issues that could hinder their productivity.
Even in organisations that are not global, traditional ‘non-working’ hours no longer exist. Holidays also differ across geographies, so support needs to be available every day of the year.
Without true 24/7/365 support, businesses could experience a significant negative impact as a result of technology issues. When it comes to backups, lack of support could also cause business continuity problems.
Backups don’t wait for business hours
One of the challenges businesses often face is that backups cannot run during core working hours, as they can impact the performance of systems. In addition, backups need to capture all of the transactions or data of the day, so need to be done after the majority of people are no longer working.
As a result, backups generally run at night, but in a globalised environment, this could also be at any time of the day, once again making 24/7 support a critical consideration.
Proactive is the key
In a traditional environment, support has always been reactive, alerting when something has gone wrong, and then waiting on someone to come online to resolve the issue. This is no longer an option when it comes to data management – if a problem with data backup occurs at 10pm, it simply cannot wait for 8am to be resolved.
Since data is the heart of the digital organisation, it is imperative to monitor backups proactively so that any issues can be detected and resolved before they can impact a business’ ability to restore. Across working hours and across time zones, this once again requires true 24/7 support.
Meeting customer expectations
Perhaps even more importantly, customers have come to expect instant gratification in an always-on world. This means that, when problems occur, they cannot wait for traditional business hours for resolution.
Data management in particular needs to be constant and constantly monitored to ensure business continuity.
Outsourcing this function to an expert service provider ensures that enterprises of all sizes can benefit from true 24/7 support, proactive monitoring, alerting and management, and the peace of mind that their backups are running smoothly to support their business.