Rejoice and celebrate, for today is World Backup Day. I know, not as thrilling as Christmas, not as chocolate-filled as Easter – but for those who care about data, this is a day to reflect and take stock on the role of data in our lives and the importance of regular backups.

When it comes to business, data is quickly becoming the number one currency. Yet, when looking at the plethroa of studies and research, the value in data backup is not being realised by businesses.

To celebrate World Backup Day, and to highlight this vital business function, CBR has asked data experts their key advice for data backup in the enterprise.

1. Do not go in data blind

Bob Plumridge, Hitachi Data Systems’ CTO, commented:

"Business leaders today want to understand what information they hold and how it can be leveraged to drive business insight and value. They are looking towards IT, as the guardians of information, to navigate where their data currently resides and interpret how it can be used.

"The issue for IT teams is that they are going in data blind. Often data isn’t classified at the point of creation, leaving businesses with no way of knowing whether they are looking at HR, sales or customer data. With the majority of data holding little to no value, the importance of classification is paramount to ensure businesses retain the crucial 20 per cent.

"Unfortunately one size does not fit all and what’s valuable to a bank isn’t necessarily useful to a hospital. Vertical solutions are crucial, especially considering the imminent growth of IoT devices. In 2015, enterprises will begin to realise the importance of understanding data at the point of creation and analysing it accordingly."

2. Modernise

Ian Wood, Head of Information Management Strategy EMEA at Symantec, told CBR:

"While today officially marks World Backup Day, businesses rely on Backup every single day as their data becomes more and more integral to their core business offering. With many companies projecting that their information will grow at an incredible rate within the next year, this free flow of data has created immense opportunity but has also presented challenges.

"Simply put, organisations of all sizes must protect their information from anything life might throw at them, including theft, Internet attacks, hard drive crashes, natural disasters, to even employees losing laptops. If you can’t replace the missing information, you put your business at risk, including the possibility of having to shutter your doors.

"The time has come to modernize, as traditional methods do not necessarily meet the needs and demands of today’s IT departments now that data is growing so quickly. It’s important for businesses to back up information and assets across scattered platforms, such as virtual and physical environments, combined with the proliferation of unstructured data, reduced IT spend and server virtualization, have had significant impact on the way organisations handle backup and recovery."

3. Enable the the Always-On enterprise

Veeam’s VP of Product Strategy, Doug Hazelman advised:

"Driving backup awareness amongst consumers is ok but for businesses (from SMB right through to enterprise) focussing on it alone is no longer enough. A backup strategy in isolation is of little value in the modern hyper-connected business environment. We work in an era of Always-On business. There is no tolerance in the modern enterprise for downtime.

"Day in, day out, we see a worrying ‘availability gap’ emerging within organisations – this gap is characterised by issues such as data loss, long recovery times, unreliable data protection, and a lack of visibility into the IT environment leading to unpredicted issues and downtime. The impact of availability is tangible and significant. Veeam’s Data Center Availability Report 2014 found that limited availability costs the average business as much as $10 million annually.

"UK businesses have to stop talking about backup and recovery strategy – this is not enough to meet the demands of today’s employees. They demand 24/7 access to applications and corporate data, they want access on multiple devices, and they want it from any location. It’s time to put availability and enabling the Always-On enterprise onto the boardroom agenda. The IT department needs to focus on what can be achieved in the Always-On business, and show how can IT deliver revolutionary new business practices."

4. Prepare for tomorrow’s workloads

Kelly Brown, Senior Director of Worldwide Regional and Channel Marketing at EMC Data Protection Solutions, commented:

"Failure happens: IT disruptions are a common and costly business experience. Organisations now need to develop a trusted data protection strategy that creates a bridge between today’s and tomorrow’s workloads, driven by the impact of cloud computing, big data and mobile devices – all of which are putting additional pressure on IT’s ability to protect data. EMC’s advice to organisations on World Backup Day would be to ensure IT departments across the UK understand that:

– A strong data protection strategy should protect all of your critical data wherever it is, whatever happens
– A data protection strategy should span the continuum of applications and still provide a level of visibility and control for application owners
– Gaps that appear between disparate vendor solutions need to be eradicated
– One size does not fit all – data protection solutions need to match the requirements of applications/workloads
– It must be clear who "owns" data protection, particularly in the cloud"

5. Look to automate

David Fisk, EMEA Sales Director at Quorum, told CBR:

"The more that can be automated and simplified with the IT contingency planning, the more it will help to reduce the number of processes and manual steps you might need to follow and maintain. Cloud computing has done a lot to change the way IT looks at contingency. It simplifies needs the IT group has to manage. Instead it is part of the Service Level Agreement provided by the cloud computing provider and the steps they take should help to protect the IT group against the disaster.

"As cloud and virtualisation technologies continue to grow, automation will continue to advance making continuity planning almost as simple to implement and manage as tape backup jobs are.

"On World Backup Day, all organisations should realise the importance of back up and take a moment to review their IT contingency plan."