This website use cookies to help you have a superior and more admissible browsing experience on the website.
Share This Article：
Intensifying Data Policies and Increasing Sector-Specific Focus
Whether in China or overseas, policies governing the data industry—covering data protection and flow, application, and oversight—have been promulgated one after another, emerging like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. For example:
In 2023, Europe released the Digital Europe Work Programme 2023-2024, aimed at driving investment to improve the security of cloud services, creating artificial intelligence experimentation and testing facilities, and enhancing data-sharing levels across various fields, with a particular focus on the development and application of key technologies such as high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.
In 2023, Germany released the Manufacturing-X initiative, which aims to establish a common infrastructure covering all areas of the manufacturing industry to achieve collaborative data use and joint sharing across industrial sectors, thereby enhancing the competitiveness and innovative capacity of the German manufacturing industry.
In 2023, China released the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Development of the Data Security Industry, which clarified the guiding ideology and basic principles for the development of the data security industry, proposed development goals and seven key tasks, and provided policy support and directional guidance for the development of China’s data security industry.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of State released the United States International Cyberspace and Digital Policy Strategy, aimed at promoting, building, and maintaining an open, inclusive, secure, and resilient digital ecosystem. It seeks to work with international partners to align rights-respecting approaches with digital and data governance, promote responsible state behavior, and address threats to cyberspace and critical infrastructure by building alliances and coordinating with partners to strengthen and build the digital and cyber capabilities of international partners.
In 2024, China released the Global Digital Economy White Paper (2023), which summarized new dynamics in digital economy policies across various countries and emphasized the driving role of manufacturing digitalization, 5G, and AI, as well as the new opportunities brought by the integration of the digital and physical economies.
Following the release of top-level industrial policies and regulations by major global powers, a series of more sector-specific data policies and plans have also been released. For example, in the United States:
The U.S. Department of Defense released the 2023 version of the Data, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence Adoption Strategy, aimed at advancing the adoption of AI within the DoD, covering aspects such as data, talent, procurement, and governance. It issued a data mandate requiring all DoD data to be visible, accessible, understandable, linked, trustworthy, interoperable, and secure (i.e., VAULTIS).
The U.S. Data Foundation jointly released the 2023 Federal Chief Data Officer Survey. The report recommends clarifying the powers and responsibilities of CDOs, optimizing the data and technical capabilities of organizations, and providing training, professional development, and change management support to build the maturity of the CDO role and data governance functions within federal agencies.
The United States is advancing the market-oriented development of government data. The U.S. government cooperates with tech giants to sign “zero-cost contracts,” building a “zero-cost” digital service procurement model to enhance the government’s data openness and sharing capabilities with low cost and high efficiency. Meanwhile, the federal government’s open data platform is technically supported by the open-source data management system CKAN, which provides application programming interfaces (APIs), visualization tools, and other support for data cataloging, storage, and access to government datasets.
These policies reflect the United States’ important layout and development direction in the data industry, aiming to promote the openness, sharing, and utilization of data to strengthen U.S. global competitiveness.
In China, relevant industry departments have also released a series of industry industrial policies:
The 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Big Data Industry, released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, emphasizes releasing the value of data factors, making the industry stronger, better, and larger, and deploys six key tasks, including accelerating the cultivation of the data factor market, leveraging the advantages of big data characteristics, consolidating the foundation of industrial development, building a stable and efficient industrial chain, creating a prosperous and orderly industrial ecosystem, and fortifying the data security protection line.
The “Data Element ×” Three-Year Action Plan (2024–2026), jointly formulated by the National Data Administration along with the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and other departments, aims to fully leverage the multiplier effect of data elements to empower economic and social development. By promoting the high-level application of data elements, it encourages multi-scenario application and multi-subject reuse of data to cultivate new industries, new models, and new momentum, providing strong support for high-quality development.
The Guiding Opinions on Strengthening Data Asset Management, issued by the Ministry of Finance, clarifies 12 main tasks, including managing data assets in accordance with laws and regulations, clarifying the rights and responsibilities of data assets, improving data asset-related standards, strengthening the management of data asset use, steadily promoting the development and utilization of data assets, and improving the data asset value evaluation system.
The Opinions on Accelerating the Development and Utilization of Public Data Resources, released by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council, aims to promote the healthy development of the data industry, enrich data application scenarios, promote regional data collaboration, strengthen the construction of data service capabilities, and foster a prosperous data industry development ecosystem.
The Measures for the Management of Electronic Archives, released by the National Archives Administration, emphasizes that electronic archive data requires at least three sets of complete backups: one set for online application and two sets for backup, which must include off-site backup. At the same time, the entire process of electronic archive management must comply with relevant laws and regulations such as national network security and data security to ensure the authenticity, integrity, usability, and security of electronic archives.
In addition, Chinese local governments have also successively issued data industry development plans. For example, the Shanghai Municipal Government released the Action Plan for Promoting Innovative Development of the Data Factor Industry (2023–2025) based on the new digital economy track. It is expected that by 2025, the scale of the data industry will reach 500 billion RMB, with an average annual compound growth rate of 15%, cultivating 1,000 “data merchant” enterprises and accelerating the release of data factor potential.
The above policies indicate that global data policies are continuously intensifying, and industry characteristics are becoming increasingly prominent. From Europe to China and the United States, top-level data policies are frequently issued, aiming to promote data industry development and strengthen data protection and flow. The continuous improvement of data policies will greatly drive the industrialization and professionalization of the sector.
China’s Data Replication Market Welcomes New Adjustments
In the context of the policy-driven era, the data replication and protection market in China and globally has ushered in unprecedented development opportunities while also facing new challenges. According to the latest report from IDC and the revenue status of Chinese vendors, the Chinese data replication and protection market is undergoing significant adjustments in 2024.
Market Growth Trends: The Rhythm of Continuous Industry Growth Will Not Change
Driven by the sustained high demand for data protection and backup in recent years, the Chinese data replication and protection market once maintained a high-speed growth trend. However, entering the first half of 2024, this market experienced a slowdown in growth. The primary reasons, influenced by China’s macro-economic environment, are government budget reductions and cost reduction and efficiency improvements in the financial industry.
Government Budget Reductions: With the complex and volatile global economic situation, governments are facing downward economic pressure and must prudently consider the structure of public financial expenditure. In this context, some government investment in information technology and data security construction slowed down in the first half of the year, especially in non-critical IT spending. This directly led to a decrease or delay in procurement volumes for data replication and protection products by government and public sectors, affecting the overall market growth rate.
Financial Institution Cost Reduction and Efficiency Improvement: As an important customer group, the financial industry is also undergoing profound changes. With the advancement of interest rate marketization and the rise of internet finance, traditional financial institutions face unprecedented competitive pressure. To maintain market competitiveness, the financial industry has sought paths for cost reduction and efficiency improvement. In the field of data backup and recovery, financial institutions have begun to pay more attention to product cost-effectiveness and service sustainability, rather than merely pursuing technological advancement.
Facing new challenges in market growth, data replication and protection vendors are actively adjusting their market strategies. On one hand, vendors have strengthened communication and cooperation with the government and financial industries to deeply understand customer needs, providing more targeted products and services for incremental markets such as big data management, utilization, and analysis scenarios. On the other hand, vendors are placing more emphasis on technological innovation and cost control to enhance market competitiveness by improving product performance and reducing production costs. Although the industry development has its ups and downs, from the perspective of China’s economic growth prospects and development resilience, the continuous development trend of the data industry will not change, and new industry demands will continue to emerge.
Rise of Domestic Vendors: Accelerated Domestic Replacement and the Opening of the Xinchuang 2.0 Era
Against the backdrop of growth adjustments in the Chinese data replication and protection market, domestic vendors have ushered in unprecedented development opportunities. With the country’s high emphasis on information security and independent controllability, combined with the continuous improvement of domestic vendors’ technical strength and product quality, domestic replacement has become an irreversible trend.
Improvement of Technical Strength of Domestic Vendors: In recent years, domestic data replication and protection vendors have made significant progress in technical R&D and innovation. By introducing and absorbing advanced international technologies and combining them with local market needs, domestic vendors have launched a series of advanced soft and hardware products that meet new customer environments and needs. These products are comparable to international counterparts in performance, stability, and security, and even possess leading advantages in certain fields. Taking Information2 Software’s backup product deployment in a large state-owned joint-stock bank as an example, it not only replaced overseas backup and archiving software products but also met the bank’s requirements for backup and recovery rates for new systems and massive data, including extreme D2T backup performance, deduplication/compression ratios, and unified management of multi-center backup storage devices.
The Xinchuang 2.0 Era: To promote the development of information security and independent controllability, relevant departments have issued a series of policies for independent innovation development, encouraging and supporting domestic vendors in the data replication and protection field. These policies have not only provided support for domestic product projects but also opened up broader market space for equipment upgrades and domestic product use. Under policy guidance, more enterprises and institutions are choosing domestic data replication and protection products to replace overseas brands. Meanwhile, to build a more open and transparent commercial market environment, development in the fields of localization and information technology application innovation (Xinchuang) will compete through open markets, involving more vendors to build a prosperous ecosystem around independent and controllable basic software. Moving from closed to open is a significant feature of Xinchuang moving from the 1.0 to the 2.0 era.
Overseas Vendors Face Challenges: With the acceleration of domestic replacement, overseas vendors face increasing challenges in the Chinese data replication and protection market. They must deal with competitive pressure from domestic vendors regarding technology, price, and service, while also adapting to the specific needs and regulatory environment of the Chinese market. These factors make the strategic challenges faced by overseas vendors in the Chinese market even more severe.
In summary, domestic data replication and protection vendors will continue to maintain strong development momentum, and this trend is difficult to reverse. With continuous technological progress, domestic vendors are expected to achieve breakthroughs in the international market. At the same time, as the country’s emphasis on information security and independent controllability continues to increase, the development space for domestic vendors in the field of data replication and protection will be further expanded.
The Eternal Theme: Data Protection and Value Mining are Equally Important
In deeply analyzing the current situation and development trends of China’s data replication and protection market, we clearly see that despite various challenges, the wave of digital transformation is driving the rapid development of informatization and digitalization with unprecedented force. This trend not only drives enterprise requirements for business continuity to new heights but also greatly increases the demand for data storage and data value mining, making them core elements of corporate operational resilience in the data era.
First, the importance of data value mining is increasingly apparent. With the rapid development of big data technology, enterprises have begun to mine valuable information from massive data to support more precise decision-making. This process has gone far beyond simple data collection and organization, reaching into the use of advanced analytical technologies (such as machine learning and deep learning) for future trend prediction, operational process optimization, and personalized user experience enhancement. For example, e-commerce platforms have successfully achieved personalized optimization of product recommendation algorithms through big data and AI, which not only significantly improves the user shopping experience but also drives substantial sales growth. This success story fully proves the huge role of data value mining in enhancing corporate competitiveness.
At the same time, the awareness of data protection across the industry continues to rise. This trend is backed by a profound recognition of data as a core asset. Data leaks, loss, and damage not only pose serious threats to an enterprise’s information security but can also lead directly to economic losses and damage to brand reputation. According to the 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report jointly released by IBM Security and Ponemon Institute, the average global cost of a data breach has climbed to $4.37 million. This staggering figure is enough to make companies realize the importance of data protection. Particularly in sensitive industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and construction, the importance of data protection is even more obvious. Once important data is encrypted or leaked, enterprises often need to pay a huge price to restore business operations and regain their reputation.
Furthermore, increased risks brought by digital transformation and strengthened legal regulations are driving companies to pay more attention to data protection. As the digitalization process accelerates, the risk of data breaches faced by enterprises is increasing. Meanwhile, governments worldwide have strengthened oversight of data protection and issued a series of related laws and regulations to guarantee data security and privacy rights. These regulations not only require enterprises to strengthen data protection measures but also clarify the legal responsibilities and penalties after a data breach. Therefore, enterprises must pay more attention to data replication and protection to ensure their own compliant operation and effectively avoid potential legal risks.
In summary, data protection and value mining have become two eternal themes that enterprises must simultaneously focus on during the digital transformation process. By strengthening data value mining and data protection measures, enterprises can not only improve their competitiveness and operational efficiency but also effectively respond to various risks and challenges brought by digital transformation. In the future, with the continuous progress of technology and the improvement of regulations, the data replication and protection market will usher in broader development prospects, and data protection and value mining will play an increasingly important role in the continuous development of enterprises.
Talent Cultivation Flourishes, and System Construction Becomes a Trend
With the rapid development and popularization of data replication technology, data disaster recovery has become an important means for enterprises and organizations to guarantee information security and business continuity. However, professional talent in the disaster recovery field is insufficient, and there are not many full-time professional disaster recovery practitioners. To meet this demand, enterprises and related associations are flourishing in talent cultivation, improving the professional quality and practical ability of talent through various online and offline training methods.
This is a very good way for enterprises and associations to promote the industry, and it can also improve the skills of industry customers in using related products, which is a win-win behavior. However, compared to other large industries, the cultivation of skills and knowledge related to data replication, especially system construction, still lags far behind. Therefore, strengthening disciplinary construction has also become a subject explored by enterprises and associations, including:
Strengthening Disciplinary Construction and Cultivating Professional Technical Talent
Relevant enterprises and associations should attach great importance to disciplinary construction and the cultivation of professional technical talent, and move the work forward to the education stage. For example, practitioners should be able to receive professional training in disaster recovery backup, system migration, and disaster recovery drills during their schooling, achieving layered and categorized cultivation to lay a good foundation for the subsequent talent system.
In terms of professional technical talent cultivation, referring to the practices of other mature industries, the following talent system can be gradually constructed:
- Senior Professional Technical Talent Cultivation: Associations and institutions focus on improving senior talent’s ability in scientific research, decision support, professional consulting, and acting as professional leaders. Hold special training, form professional think tanks at all levels, and improve professional capabilities through participation in actual combat and project research.
- Intermediate Professional Technical Talent Cultivation: Enterprises can focus on improving intermediate talent’s ability in professional research and handling complex problems. Select technical backbones by specialty for targeted cultivation, precise guidance, and exchanges with corresponding scientific research institutes.
- Junior Professional Technical Talent Cultivation: Focus on laying a solid professional foundation and improving junior talent’s ability to solve general professional technical problems. Partner with universities and research institutes to improve the technical capabilities of junior talent.
At the same time, evaluation cycles should be set scientifically. Basic research positions should emphasize medium-to-long-term goal orientation to encourage continuous exploration, innovation, and long-term accumulation. Optimize title reviews, smooth channels for professional title evaluation, support qualified employers to independently conduct title evaluations, and add research series applicable to disaster recovery, information security, and data planners to meet the development needs of professional technical talent in different fields.
Constructing a Diversified Reward System to Stimulate Innovation Vitality
To fully stimulate the innovation vitality of professional technical talent, enterprises should build a diversified reward system. Specific measures include: autonomous distribution of performance wages (leaning toward talent with significant achievements), flexible distribution forms (exploring annual salary systems or project wages for high-level talent), and implementing cash rewards for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. Through associations and industry alliances, national, local, and industry-level award programs should be established to set industry benchmarks.
Improving the Effectiveness of Position Management
To enhance talent support capabilities, enterprises and associations focus on the effectiveness of position management. Specific measures include: reasonably setting position structure ratios (increasing technical position proportions in relevant institutions), strengthening term-of-employment assessments, and implementing categorized management for different types of technical positions to clarify responsibilities and requirements. Establishing a high-level professional technical talent pool and publishing entry guides will leverage the leading role of senior talent to drive the overall improvement of the technical workforce.
Deepening International Exchange and Cooperation to Enhance International Competitiveness
Enterprises and associations should also focus on deepening international exchange and cooperation. Specific measures include: organizing international training projects, inviting international peers to study topics like disaster recovery and digital security, and supporting participation in international academic exchanges, forums, and exhibitions. These measures help Chinese brands go global and serve global customers while facilitating international cooperation in data protection and value mining.
In summary, enterprises and associations are exploring the systematic construction of the industry, proving that the pursuit of maturity in the whole industry has reached an unprecedented height. It also indicates that more and more institutions and individuals hope to make a difference in the rapid development of the data industry, which will greatly drive the industry toward a healthy and stable direction of development.
{{ author_info.name }}
{{author_info.introduction || "No brief introduction for now"}}
More Related Articles
Table of Contents:
Stay Updated on Latest Tips
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest insights, news, exclusive content. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Ready to Enhance Business Data Security?
Start a 60-day free trial or view demo to see how Info2Soft protects enterprise data.
Please fill out the form and submit it, our customer service representative will contact you soon.
By submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Privacy Notice.
