Q1 2019

MEAMARKETS / Q1 2019 27 Industry 4.0: Delivering the Foundation for Manufacturing’s Future they’re tested – and fail. IT teams must develop a strategy that protects every critical business unit across the supply chain, without negatively impacting the experiences of employees or partners. Once the plan and relevant systems are in place, stress test it regularly to identify any pain points before a disaster takes place. 2. Manage your data intelligently Ensuring the availability of data and applications must be the main imperative of the business continuity plan. That means using solutions designed to address the continuity challenges of highly virtualised and cloud- enabled manufacturing environments. Selecting a data availability solution that can achieve a recovery time of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data should meet the requirements of most parts of the business, even when a disaster strikes. Volvo, for instance, backed up its on-premise virtual machines using the latest data availability solutions. This ensured that in the event of a fire or other catastrophe every dealer could recover a failed VM within minutes to minimise the impact of outages on operations. 3. Keep your business’ eyes open Visibility and ongoing monitoring are key to preventing issues and responding to them when they occur. Real-time monitoring and reporting on virtual environments enable IT teams to anticipate and address potential problems before they affect operations. Similarly, end to end visibility for both physical and virtual machines helps to prevent possible failures of any type of application or system. Having this clear picture of events can also save businesses time and money in meeting compliance requirements. 4. Protect your present and your future Two-thirds (66%) of IT decision makers say that IT downtime is hindering their digital transformation efforts. It’s critical that businesses balance the introduction of new technology with ensuring data availability, to avoid hindering the ongoing operations of the organisation. Data availability solutions can enable IT teams to test applications and upgrades before they go into production. It’s also possible to manage, migrate and restore data across a physical, virtual and cloud- based infrastructure without complex configurations or additional hardware investments – minimising the operational costs of introducing new technology. A foundation for Industry 4.0 Digital transformation is bringing immense benefits to manufacturers and progressing towards Industry 4.0 will be critical for organisations to secure their place in the future of the sector. However, as manufacturers’ dependence on digital grows, business continuity is becoming more and more of a business imperative. Using the latest solutions, IT teams can build a reliable foundation of intelligent data management to underpin their digital systems. In this way, businesses can ensure that they can take advantage of new technologies with confidence and truly embrace Industry 4.0.