We live in the era of the 'borderless enterprise.' This new enterprise is a fluid and adaptable ecosystem whose resources are accessed, used and shared via mobile, social and cloud. How has this model changed over the years? How mobility and the cloud have 'decentralized' data and what does it mean for organizations working to manage and protect information? Let's take a closer look at these questions along with a few emerging technologies we will see in 2016.

First, some background and context-Once upon a time, IT had full control of protecting data, and data was centralized in a company's data center. During the last few years, mobility and the cloud have literally pushed data out of the data center and onto various devices. According to a Ponemon Institute study, 44 percent of corporate data stored in cloud environments is not managed or controlled by the IT department. Also, it has been estimated that more than 30 percent of business users have lost an external or mobile device containing sensitive business or personal information. As a result, enterprises are tasked with protecting data amidst an increasingly dispersed data landscape (think Office 365, Box, Salesforce, Dropbox, etc.) while also keeping the data compliant with regulations and enterprise policies. In addition, companies must adhere to global data privacy and industry-specific regulations (HIPAA, GLBA, COPPA). Ensuring better data backup and recovery efforts and improving cloud infrastructure services and regulatory compliance are all major priorities for today's enterprises.

This new decentralized data model has forced a change in the way enterprises manage, protect, access and govern information. Think of how the new cloud or Bring Your Own App wave (BYOA), with so much data outside the firewall, is impacting data use, accessibility and management. The largest data recovery and business continuity related change is the shift from software to service model. Organizations are increasingly using the cloud as a secondary storage platform for data recovery. Primary storage refers to data stored that needs to be readily accessible by applications and the workforce. Secondary storage is what you don't see, including information archival, backup and secondary copies of data. Additionally, the public cloud has become an increasingly popular choice, rather than hybrid or private clouds, to manage Disaster Recovery, as it is more cost-effective to build in and spin up. A company can leverage its existing investment in infrastructure as well.

This new borderless enterprise and dispersed data landscape requires specific technologies to ensure greater business continuity. Here are a few technology models that enterprises will be implementing in the coming year:

Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery: Today, business continuity must extend out to the various networks and mobile devices employees are using. Enterprises must ensure that if any system, server or network within the organization goes down that there is immediate failover. Currently, there are systems in place to facilitate a failover, but the process is not instantaneous. As services move out into the cloud and employees access services on mobile devices, enterprises are faced with new challenges. These employees, on their mobile devices, are accessing the system and various services from remote locations. How does a company provide access to these services when disaster strikes and when the data center goes down? One option that more and more companies are embracing: moving workloads to the cloud, including a Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) model that replicates on-premises workload data to run in a cloud environment. DRaaS is a cloud/backup service model that uses the cloud to protect application and data from disaster-related disruption. It actually enables the full backup and replication of all cloud data and applications while serving as a secondary infrastructure. The DRaaS environment becomes the 'new' environment, allowing an enterprise and users to continue with daily business while the primary system is repaired. As the number of remote end users continues to increase, enterprises must provide the ability to access different servers at different sites.