CIO Best Practices: Rapid Provisioning

This is the first blog in a series covering the top 5 CIO best practices.

CIOs and other data custodians have some tough hurdles to get over if they want to keep their companies’ data safe and recoverable. Infrastructure complexity, continually changing business structure and operations, ever-growing data stores, and the increasing use of machine learning and analytics combine to make data protection a very complicated yet critically important proposition.

In our team’s decades of work with people who are in charge of enterprise data, we’ve distilled five best practices that the most successful CIOs have come to rely on.

One of them is rapid provisioning.

It used to be that people were prepared to wait the several months it would take to spin up new applications or services in the data center, but those days are gone. In today’s world, where so many things happen instantly, being able deploy new IT systems quickly — in hours instead of months — is imperative. That includes enterprise data protection.

But how do you make it happen?

The conventional approach to data protection — a mix of new and legacy hardware and software, sometimes across multiple locations and cloud environments — makes it almost impossible to get anything done quickly. Rapid provisioning calls for new, modern data protection techniques, such as cloud services and SaaS models.

For cloud-only data protection, there’s no more on-prem software installation, costly infrastructure for application hosting, tedious user configuration, or time-consuming software updates.

Instead, a cloud and SaaS-based solution:

• Uses software that is already installed and configured in the cloud to provision a server and make an application ready for use in just hours.
• Puts an end to mismatched release levels, configuration issues, and other problems that arise when deploying conventional software.
• Automates and accelerates allocation of system resources, deployment of features, and configuration of user permissions.
• Ensures access to the most up-to-date version of the software.
• Uses analytics to aid automation.
• Reduces ongoing efforts for IT departments that are stretched thin.

... and much more.

Cobalt Iron Compass is a sophisticated SaaS data protection solution that’s available in cloud, hybrid, and on-premises options so you can deliver IT services when and where they are needed. Compass monitors and verifies that backup operations are successful, and it confirms that software updates are applied and hardware failures resolved. It can even support data-based capacity planning and provisioning.

CIOs at some of the world’s largest enterprises use Compass to ensure rapid provisioning, making it easier for them to scale the operation according to demand.

For a closer look at how successful CIOs are protecting their enterprise data, check out our white paper, “5 Best Practices CIOs Are Using to Modernize Enterprise Data Protection.” 

And watch this spot for our next blog in this series, when we’ll load you up with even more CIO insight!