By Tyna Callahan, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Scality

Storing and Protecting Data, Still Top of Mind

The best ways to store and protect data will continue to be a major concern to organizations in 2020. Whether it be evaluating the best cloud approach or fending off hackers, companies will continue to work to manage and safeguard their most valuable asset: data.

Monopolies:

It's already started, but in 2020, IT teams will make the move from "all-cloud" initiatives to hybrid- and multi-cloud data management solutions as they continue to recognize that to depend 100% on a single cloud provider is to empower a monopoly. Cloud providers have capitalized on lock-in, and their customers see it.  And this is a key reason why 53% of enterprises that had moved everything to public cloud are already repatriating some of their data (IDC). Storing data in one cloud and on-premises, (hybrid cloud infrastructure) or in multiple clouds (multi-cloud infrastructure) are both sensible, proven approaches to ensure organizations can remain in control and beat the monopoly. 

AI will compete more strenuously against....AI, fueling monopolistic practices and reducing competitive situations (a key early example of this includes the homogenization of air travel pricing).  To be ready for what the fourth (and fifth) industrial revolution brings, the division between what requires ‘humans' and what does not will accelerate, so we will continue to see the divvying-up of those tasks and functions that require humans, and those that AI does well.  As time goes on, humans will do what requires care, creativity and artisanship; and everything else will be automated.  2020 will see this division of ‘labor' accelerate. 

Hackers/Data Breaches:

New ways of identifying patients, customers, and depositors will be developed in 2020, as the already accelerating pace of hacking and data breaches continues.  There's huge value in stored data.  Until they make these changes, hospitals and medical providers, for example, will remain strong targets due to the value of the data they store: not patient health information, but the patient identification that goes along with it (government ID, birth date, address, etc.). 

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