KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 24 ― Decision-makers are doubling down on their investments in digital technologies with 97 per cent claiming that the Covid-19 crisis has accelerated their digital transformation strategies, according to the Covid-19 Digital Engagement Report by Twilio.

Traditional brick and mortar stores have shifted to online transactions and delivery as their primary business.

Schools have completely pivoted to digital classrooms and distance learning.

All of these initiatives resulted in a common ground ― producing a lot of digital data.

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While increased digital adoption shows huge promise for organisations across various sectors, this also opens up numerous vulnerabilities that threat actors can exploit to launch attacks such as ransomware.

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), for example, the notorious Thanos Ransomware has been targeting state-run organisations in the MENA region, the ransom requests the victim to transfer US$20,000 (RM83,740) into a specified bitcoin wallet to restore the files on the system.

However, paying the ransom does not guarantee the data is as intact as before.

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The best precaution is to essentially have a cohesive backup strategy in place to ensure that your business can return to normal should a ransomware attack or a data loss disaster occur.

However, according to the Bitglass report, 41 per cent of the organisations confessed that they do not have a functioning IT infrastructure ready for the post-Covid-19 workplace, and 50 per cent admitted that finding the proper equipment and solution are their biggest obstacles.

Business and IT leaders often face a dilemma on making choices with the pressure of proving return on investment as companies are often constrained by limited resources.

Manpower and subscription costs are considered as the two biggest pain points when it comes to implementing a backup practice.

Studies found that organisations use an average of 4.1 backup solutions, meaning IT admins need to spend excessive time and effort to accommodate different solutions provided by different vendors.

Furthermore, the recurring subscription cost and maintenance fee accumulated by separate providers could result in a considerable expense.

Synology Active Backup Suite is a solution that could best optimise companies’ investment by resolving the mentioned pain points.

In the following section, we take a closer look at the key components that make Active Backup Suite an ideal backup solution for businesses.

Centralised management made deployment easy

Synology Active Backup solution is perfectly built for the existing business IT environment by integrating seamlessly into mainstream vendor systems and networking architectures.

It supports and consolidates backup tasks for most commonly used protocols and platforms such as SMB and Rsync server, Windows endpoints, VM on vSphere and Hyper-V, to SaaS applications ― Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace.

Active Backup centralises backup tasks for physical virtual environment and SaaS service. ― Picture courtesy of Synology
Active Backup centralises backup tasks for physical virtual environment and SaaS service. ― Picture courtesy of Synology

With this simple and centralised management system, IT admins no longer have to worry about failing to take care of any latest updates, nor do they have to constantly juggle between different windows when monitoring backup tasks.

Take Unesco for an example, it is an international organisation with 70 field offices spanning around the world.

The organisation was challenged to standardise its IT solutions and was seeking a reliable, secure, and easy-to-deploy solution that can work seamlessly with its existing infrastructure.

After learning Synology suits their multiple needs and are much more cost-effective compared to other competitors, Unesco leveraged a Synology NAS to back up 50 PCs and servers.

With Active Backup for Business, they can now centralise and manage all their backup tasks from one simple console.

The organisation is now powered by a reliable and secure solution to manage their data all over the world.

Maximise storage efficiency

While more backups might lead to challenges with storage capacity as data continues to increase.

What we are offering with our backup solution is Global deduplication technology that can help reduce storage consumption.

For instance, Shiseido Taiwan has implemented the Active Backup for businesses to backup 500 employees’ desktops and up to 600GB daily changed data.

Our global deduplication technology has helped effectively delete duplicate data and efficiently save 52 per cent storage space by only taking up 28TB out of the total 58TB on the server.

Shiseido Taiwan leveraged active backup for business, PC and VMware Servers backup. ― Picture courtesy of Synology
Shiseido Taiwan leveraged active backup for business, PC and VMware Servers backup. ― Picture courtesy of Synology

Synology Active Backup for Business enables organisations to significantly reduce backup time and enhance storage usage efficiency while achieving full data protection.

Low total cost of ownership by streamlining acquisition and technical support

Today, many companies are still inclined to purchase their storage servers and backup software separately when setting up their IT infrastructure.

Apart from the separate hardware and software purchase, long-term maintenance costs and recurring license fees may result in a high total cost of ownership.

With Synology NAS and the Active Backup Suite, it seamlessly complements hardware with software by providing an integrated backup and recovery appliance without any occurring license fees. This turnkey solution centralises your data administration and streamlines acquisition, deployment, and technical support.

To sum up, an all-in-one consolidated backup solution that meets the above demands and essentials is highly recommended for business continuity in the post-Covid world.

Active Backup Suite is an integrated and modernised backup solution that will benefit budget-constrained businesses with just a one-off hardware cost. With the one-time purchase and one-stop support, Active Backup solution not only decreases the time and expense of procurement, but it also allows end-users to have lower management effort and learning curve of the deployment.

Synology helps to upgrade your backup strategy to meet modern backup challenges. ― Picture courtesy of Synology
Synology helps to upgrade your backup strategy to meet modern backup challenges. ― Picture courtesy of Synology

Learn more on how to tackle data protection challenges with a better backup plan here.

Join Synology Malaysia webinar for free to see the real-world cases on how businesses with different IT infrastructures protect their data with a complete backup and recovery strategy, register at your earliest convenience here.

*Joanne Weng is the senior sales manager at Synology.