Backing up data for recovery in the event of a disaster provides critical insurance for enterprises. But why let potentially valuable data sit there and collect dust when it could be put to work for tests, development and cost savings?

Loads of companies would like to do just that — but they can’t work very effectively with data they can’t see. “Many times, they don’t know what they have,” said Rama Kolappan (pictured), worldwide vice president of product management, strategy and experience at Veritas Technologies LLC.

Veritas’ 360 Data Management provides a comprehensive platform that not only protects data, but allows companies to understand that data and derive value from it. For example, “If you back up your data, you should be able to use the same copy to do a DevTest,” he said. Veritas Velocity copy data management, part of the 360 Data Management suite, allows users to re-purpose backup data in this way,

Kolappan spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Veritas Vision conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. (* Disclosure below.)

View it before you move it

Multicloud operations also require businesses to understand their data on a deep level so they can choose the proper location for it, according to Kolappan. Veritas Information Map, or InfoMap, another element in 360, provides visibility into unstructured and “dark data” (unused operational data).

“We provide visibility so they know what data they have before they do any migration,” he said. This can prevent compliance and regulation mismatches and also save money, he added. “It is expensive to bring data back from, say, [Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud storage] Glacier to any other storage tier or on-prem. So you need to have the visibility before you send the data out,” Kolappan said.

Enterprises need all of these different data visibility and management tools on a single platform for ease of use across the organization, he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Veritas Vision 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Veritas Vision 2017. Neither Veritas Technologies LLC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE