By Gary Robinson , EMEA Director , Global System Integrators , Commvault

When the advertising at train stations or on the side of every other taxi is talking about the importance of cloud computing and its business benefits , trying to decide the best combination of cloud solutions to manage the variety of data sets , critical workloads , applications and emerging technologies , such as AI , Internet of Things or blockchain , can be confusing .

According to Gartner , enterprise IT spending for cloud-based offerings will grow faster than traditional ( non-cloud ) IT offerings through 2022 . By 2022 , cloud shift across key enterprise IT markets will increase to 28 %, up from 19 % in 2018 and organisations without a cloud-first strategy where the cloud is primary , prioritised and promoted , will likely fall behind competitors .

As well as this groundswell towards the cloud , today ’ s CIOs are increasingly recognising that single provider cloud solutions are less-and-less fit for purpose when it comes to addressing the data challenges of today , and the demanding business requirements of tomorrow . To put this into context , a recent IDC study found that the volume of data on earth is predicted to increase from 33 Zettabytes ( ZB ), in 2018 to 175ZB by 2025 , half of which will be stored in public cloud storage .

It can be challenging enough to manage terabytes of data across multiple environments with one cloud provider , just imagine doing this with zettabytes of disparate data sets , across multiple cloud providers all offering variations of private , public , hybrid environments and different SLAs to boot .

People aside , data has become the most important asset for organisations operating in today ’ s digital economy . The shift to cloud has been an underlying enabler for the digital transformation boom of the last decade , but a bi-product of this ( increasingly multi-cloud ), shift has been unprecedented challenges to manage , use and secure data .

Data responsibility is one of the central challenges that organisations now face today , but most often , traditional tools simply don ’ t cut it when it comes to handling workloads across different cloud environments or multiple platforms . While there are plenty of niche solutions that work well enough in specific environments , surely this single-use approach actually encourages vendor lock-in and increases complexity rather than solving it ?

By minimising the risk of cloud provider lock-in ; providing service resiliency and migration opportunities ; and offering the benefits of agility , scalability and elasticity along the way , hybrid and multi-cloud approaches are no longer a matter of if , rather a matter of when . And , this in turn has fuelled the need for data management solutions that can ensure data is protected and managed across whatever platform or variety of cloud infrastructure it lives in .

In a multi-cloud , hybrid environment , where change is the only true constant , an organisation ’ s ability to protect data , move it around freely , recover it and have a single view of its data assets is critical to its future success . Whether you ’ ve yet to begin or have already started your cloud migration roadmap , working with the right partners can accelerate your journey to the cloud and , at the same time , empower your business to stay ahead of the competition .

At Commvault , we love what we do . And we love working with Accenture . The Accenture Cloud Innovation Center , coupled with our best-in-class features and functionality , we ’ ve got all your questions and needs covered when it comes to delivering a data management and cloud strategy fit for the hybrid and multi-cloud world of tomorrow .