Many organizations consider data to be their most valuable asset, but unfortunately it can also be among the most vulnerable. Without a robust data center cybersecurity strategy, the risks of data loss and data unavailability constantly loom, threatening costly outages, downtime, malware attacks and other nontrivial business consequences. Furthermore, when you consider the additional challenges associated with data management such as compliance requirements and opportunity for human error, there are many reasons for IT teams to lose sleep.

These concerns are particularly daunting at smaller and growing organizations, where there are often limited budgets and resources to address and mitigate problems. Although security is a top priority, it’s also the most frequently cited skills shortfall and concern among mid-market IT leaders. The good news is you don’t have to embark on your IT transformation journey alone—and by implementing and streamlining trusted data center solutions you’re equipped to become more competitive.

Trusted Data Center Leaders experience organization-wide benefits

New research from ESG confirms that organizations in the mid-market segment achieve quantifiable benefits by prioritizing the security of their data center and utilizing modern storage platforms. To understand the competitive advantages afforded to Trusted Data Center Leaders, ESG conducted a survey of 1,650 IT decision makers at organizations with 100-999 employees.

Of the organizations surveyed, only seven percent met the criteria to be classified as a Trusted Data Center Leader, meaning they aligned to the following infrastructure, security and data protection best practices:

• They refresh and retire data center infrastructure regularly, with an average age of server and storage systems at less than three years.
• They strongly believe that trusted technologies matter and have an organizational commitment to security features across infrastructure technology.
• They have successfully implemented secure and reliable infrastructure technology, including capabilities to encrypt sensitive data and replicate most or all data to secondary systems.

Despite comprising a small portion of the survey sample, Leaders experience significant benefits compared to their peers who have not fully committed to the same IT practices:

• Leaders are 7X more likely to view their application and system uptime as excellent.
• Leaders experience an average of 60 percent reduction in the cost of downtime, saving as much as $20M per year.
• Leaders are 1X more successful at attaining customer satisfaction scores that exceed expectations.
• 92 percent of Leaders report that their infrastructure investments to maximize uptime and availability and minimize security risk have met or exceeded ROI forecasts.

Improve growth and productivity with secure storage infrastructure

Organizations who lead in data center trust not only prevent data outages but gain greater control of their IT environment and protect the integrity of their brand. Advanced data protection features make this possible by ensuring protection against data corruption, compromise and loss. Looking specifically at storage infrastructure, Leaders consistently reported a higher presence of data protection features that safeguard on-premises data such as automatic send-site failover capabilities, multi-system replication, self-encrypting drives, data snapshots and clones.

If you’re not sure how to incorporate these capabilities into your data center strategy, fear not! Dell Technologies offers the broadest portfolio of trusted infrastructure and data protection solutions, specifically designed for the needs of growing businesses. Our secure storage solutions are engineered to store, manage and safeguard data in each array, ensuring you’re protected as you scale. And, because we understand future technology needs can be difficult to predict, we make it easy to adopt transformative offerings with a breadth of flexible payment solutions, including consumption-based and as-a-service options. For additional support, Dell Technologies Services are available to help you confidently deploy and optimize your infrastructure for continued success.

All-inclusive storage solutions that propel your organization further

Dell EMC Unity XT is our award-winning, midrange unified storage offering that is designed for performance, optimized for efficiency and built for a multi-cloud world. Unity XT helps you simplify your path to IT transformation and unlock the full potential of your data with more IOPS, memory and drives to scale to the needs of your business. Your investment is further protected with a dual-active controller architecture and enterprise-class data services. Implementing Unity XT immediately ensures your data is secure and protected with robust features that include native sync/async replication, snapshots and data-at-rest encryption across the entire array. The no-compromise design also includes Dynamic Pools for faster drive re-build times, as well as support for multiple cloud deployment options.

In addition, the PowerVault ME4 Series is an affordable entry storage array that’s purpose-built for SAN and DAS environments and designed for versatility. It offers block-only architecture with VMware virtualization integration and includes protective services, like snapshots, replication and self-encrypting Drives (SEDs), along with a Distributed RAID (ADAPT) software architecture.

Both Unity XT and the PowerVault ME4 Series are fully integrated with the Dell Technologies data protection ecosystem, granting you the flexibility to select the best backup and recovery solutions to meet your data center requirements. Rest assured knowing our built-in security capabilities equip your IT teams to more efficiently manage resources and focus on innovation.

Don’t let security be an afterthought in your IT landscape

Become a Trusted Data Center Leader with innovative and secure solutions from Dell Technologies. For peace of mind your vital data is protected—wherever it resides and as your business evolves— it’s crucial to choose an IT partner you trust with an end-to-end approach to security. Formidable storage solutions are part of our DNA at Dell Technologies, and we have extensive experience helping organizations to solve IT challenges across their data center.

To learn more about the Trusted Data Center research from ESG, read the eBook.