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Backing up the growth challenge: CA

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Preeti
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MUMBAI, INDIA: Storage industry is not just a backstage supporting cast craving for a cameo around the spotlight. It is making its way forward and may someday even dictate the roles of technology industry's current protagonists. Vijayant Rai, country head for data management business from CA Technologies helps to spool in some fresh views on the back-up side of storage industry and how is it reeling in issues and trends around tape's relevance, data deduplication, hardware neutrality, flash's advent and more.

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Let us first get the quintessential tape vs. disk debate get out of the way. What is your angle to this argument?

The verdict is still out there. The way we look at data protection is different. Disk to disk (D2D) is for faster recovery but at the same time you can do away with both. Retaining data and compliance side still holds tape as a good enough option. RTO or RPO metrics define what a user would choose and there is a cost attached to anything. I would say the debate will persist for a while.

Storage newsbytes see to be in awe of words like ‘flash' or ‘in-memory' right now. What do you make of the emergence of new disruptors?

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Tape is still widely used in enterprises because of its acceptability. A lot of action is happening with virtualization and as that continues; data management will have to support these environments. There are trade-offs to be observed and even with cloud as a destination, recovery goals etc are matters to be kept in mind. Yes, new technologies and destinations will emerge and at CA we will move forward.

Is data deduplication moving forward well? Does all the attention that ‘big data' wave is occupying affect it in some way, especially with availability or compliance imperatives flanking it on the other side?

It is a feature in our D2D products for three years now. It is a key factor when it comes to saving space. Looking at Big Data or Analytics, we help customers manage their data and that's where our expertise lies. Dedupe has been around for a few years now. It does not take away data integrity at all as indexing and sequencing remain the same in terms of compliance however and many customers have a variety of business continuity plans.

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Examples like Appdynamics suit or others remind us of patent wars and IP struggles. How would you phrase CA's growth from an organic vs. inorganic stand point?

An acquisition like ARCserve is something that is part of our basket for twenty years now. D2D side was built up from grounds up. Last year we came up with Back-up on Cloud for MS Azure. This year is about ARCserve's desktop version. We have been augmenting our portfolio in every market-need-based way.

Your recent announcement with ARCserve for Linux claims that it complements this D2D for Microsoft Windows. Any comments on your Linux focus?

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We work with many customers with both Windows and Linux environments so we thought it was important to have a Linux offering as well. It was great timing to do that. This one for Linux helps organizations protect the integrity and availability of critical systems, applications and data within their shrinking backup windows.

Is it easy to have hardware agnostic solutions?

Today we have all solutions available on many platforms. One thing that CA is very strong at is in providing heterogeneity.

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Would you say that storage industry still needs to cover some spots well?

Cloud will be a big force to watch for when you look at data management. We have moved to capacity-based licensing a year back hence I can assure that changes are happening and we are orienting our products and licensing at a fast pace. Disruption in ways of models and technologies will happen and we will gear up for it.

Do you glance at your competition as you move ahead?

We are in a space that is very mature. We have interesting competition around us so it is fun to keep track. We also have partners, Sis etc for our go-to-market space and we work with them very closely. India is growing at fast rate in terms of data and infrastructure. As the country continues to grow, data becomes more critical. We help customers manage this challenge of growth with enough back-up and disaster recovery solutions. Our spectrum of customers is large from large enterprise with mature practices to SMBs and companies opting for managed services.