Big Data, data in marketing, real time data — the talk around data these days is often around the cool tricks it can do in applications. A less-hyped issue is how to protect your data so that it’s available when you need it.

Beth Phalen, SVP and GM of data protection and availability solutions of Core Technologies at EMC, said that the increasing complexity of data storing necessitates a greater protective strategy. John Walls and Stu Miniman (@stu), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, spoke to Phalen during EMC World 2016.

According to Walls, talking to customers about this is “almost like vitamins; they don’t want to take it.” Phalen agreed and said that EMC’s Data Domain DD Boost for Enterprise Applications can be like the “initial vitamin [so they can] begin to see the benefits of having a data protection infrastructure.”

Too much of a good thing

Phalen said that companies need to understand they could have a problem with “copy sprawl” that is unnecessarily wasting funds. This is basically when you have an unnecessary number of backup copies of your data. This is one reason it’s so important to implement sophisticated, up-to-date data protection.

Helping the medicine go down

“When you think about what customers are doing now — they’re protecting storage that’s distributed all over the globe. It is much more complex than it was when you had one or maybe two data centers,” Phalen said.

What’s needed are tools to help people gather and understand their data information in one place. “We need to be giving people interfaces and information in a way that’s consumable, so they can make really smart decisions about their copies and their data protection,” she concluded.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of EMC World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE