THE CHALLENGE: LEGACY DATABASES (STILL)
That familiar old scourge, legacy systems, now gets in the way of effective cloud architectures—and this will be a major headache going forward in 2024. “There is a fundamental mismatch between old-world relational databases that are slow to provision, scale, and operate and modern, cloud-native infrastructure and applications,” said Suda Srinivasan, VP of strategy and marketing at Yugabyte. “This imbalance, which we call the cloud-native velocity mismatch, is one of the most challenging data-related issues that enterprises have to face in the coming year.”
The trend: “Over the past decade, the tech stack has gone cloud-native layer by layer,” said Srinivasan. “But what about the transactional database that most business- critical applications rely on? Organizations face immense pressure to quickly and cost-effectively deliver powerful and accurate applications that add value. Companies need to attract and maintain customers who are becoming harder to please in an environment where high expectations, 24/7 accessibility, absolute data accuracy, and swift innovation are nonnegotiable.”
Plus, he added, “there have already been several attempts to solve some of these emerging problems. For example, several years ago, NoSQL emerged as an alternative database that delivered scale and resilience. However, it slowed developers down and forced them to make data consistency and SQL query trade-offs.”
The solution: “For too long, companies’ critical applications have been limited by legacy SQL and NoSQL databases,” said Srinivasan. “While these databases offered tangible benefits at the time, they also forced organizations into compromises in areas like data consistency, resiliency, and scalability. To make the most of their investments, organizations now need to strategically align their cloud infrastructure and application modernization efforts with a focus on database modernization. Modern distributed databases provide a data solution that combines the strengths of both SQL and NoSQL—data consistency, built-in resilience, and high levels of scalability—along with innovations that future-proof the data layer.”
THE CHALLENGE: DATA SECURITY (STILL)
Data security is always a pressing concern, and the year ahead will offer little, if any, relief. Unfortunately, ransomware is not going away anytime soon, and the pain it inflicts may only grow more intense.
“While it’s not a new risk, the pronounced socioeconomic effects of ransomware have merited growing attention from every industry and government agency,” said Matt Ninesling, director of hardware engineering at Spectra Logic. “Bad actors are looking for weaknesses every day, everywhere, and organizations must take action to secure data, as well as instill a set of best practices to remove human error where possible.”
The trend: “Ransomware will continue to grow in scale and frequency,” Ninesling predicted. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, by 2031, ransomware is expected to cost its victims upwards of $265 billion, with a new attack on a consumer or business every 2 seconds.
The solution: “As malware payloads and extortion tactics become increasingly refined, organizations need a multipronged, comprehensive strategy,” said Ninesling. “Organizations that have typically relied on retaining a single copy of backup data on disk or in the public cloud should consider the 3-2-1-1-0 rule as a data protection best practice, which recommends at least three copies of data, on two different types of media, one offsite and one offline. Ensuring that multiple copies of data exist in disparate locations, including at least one unconnected, air-gapped copy, is a very effective way to prepare for and remediate against a ransomware attack. A comprehensive plan should consider preemptive measures to avoid, recognize, and stop the attack. It should also include remedial actions after an attack to control and assess the damage before determining the quickest, most secure path to recovery.”