In 2023, rapid digital transformation, cyber security threats, and supply chain disruptions posed significant challenges for businesses, necessitating robust IT infrastructures. As these challenges persist into 2024, companies are increasingly demanding high availability and comprehensive disaster recovery solutions to ensure uninterrupted operations and data resilience amidst evolving uncertainties domestically and abroad.
Cassius Rhue VP of Customer Experience at SIOS Technology predicts the following major trends driven by these expectations:
Application high availability becomes universal
As reliance on applications continues to rise, IT teams will be pressured to deliver efficient high availability for applications once considered non-essential. Once reserved for mission-critical systems, such as SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, and HANA, application high availability – typically delivered with HA clustering technology – will become a requirement for more systems, applications, and services throughout the enterprise.
Cloud and OS agnostic high availability becomes an expected requirement for most applications
IT teams will look for application HA solutions that are consistent across operating systems and cloud reducing complexity and improving cost-efficiency. As the need for HA rises, companies running applications in both on-prem and cloud environments as well as those running applications in both Windows and Linux environments will look to streamline their application environments with HA solutions that deliver a consistent user interface across all of their environments and also for matching cloud and OS technical support and services from the HA vendor.
The trend toward migration to SAP HANA is likely to continue in 2024
The mandatory 2027 migration will push more companies to migrate to SAP HANA. As companies migrate to SAP HANA there will be an increased need for more sophisticated and flexible high availability and disaster recovery solutions that help them bridge the gap between existing systems and the new, more modern systems that take advantage of SAP HANA’s capabilities. Organizations will look for HA solutions that help them find ways to take advantage of emerging technologies and accelerate digital transformation, while not losing the HA and DR capabilities that continue to arise.
Automation becomes more common in high availability and disaster recovery efforts as data and analytics increase complexity
As the volume and variety of data as well as the channels through which data are collected increase, organizations will require more information about why faults/failures occurred and how to address potential issues. Automation and orchestration tools will play a central role, streamlining root cause analysis, improving intelligent responses, and enhancing disaster recovery processes to further reduce downtime and enhance data availability.
The focus on data security and compliance will intensify
The focus on data retention, security, and access controls will intensify prompting organizations to integrate enhanced security measures deeper into their high availability and disaster recovery solutions, services, and strategies. As the volume and variety of data as well as the channels through which data are collected and processed increase, organizations will require more security measures to be baked into their solutions.
Sophisticated storage and DR strategies will become crucial to the demands of an increasingly dynamic and data-driven business landscape
As the volume of unstructured data continues to surge, storage solutions are expected to prioritize scalability, tiered performance, and accessibility. Enterprises will also adopt more sophisticated and resilient DR strategies using multiple high availability (HA) nodes, and DR technologies that understand the complexity of tiered storage solutions. Cloud storage is expected to continue its ascendancy, with organizations increasingly relying on scalable and flexible cloud solutions to meet their expanding data requirements. At the same time, a growing number of companies will look to move workloads out of the cloud to on-prem environments in favor of more predictable costs and greater control over their environments.
As businesses navigate the persistent challenges from 2023 into 2024, the prioritization of high availability in IT strategies catalyzes a transformative shift where application high availability becomes widespread, automation reinforces disaster recovery efforts, data security intensifies, and sophisticated storage strategies become imperative, marking the evolving trajectory of resilient, data-driven enterprises in the coming year.
