FFWD
- AI and automation are reshaping project management, increasing the need for resilient, SaaS-specific backups to guard against data loss from automation failures or human error.
- As workflows become more distributed, organizations need unified visibility and restore capabilities across SaaS tools.
- Security, compliance, and business continuity are under the spotlight, requiring teams to adopt solutions with audit logs, access controls, and data residency options that meet regulatory standards.
Earlier this month, thousands of forward-thinking leaders and innovative companies came together for Elevate NYC, monday.com’s flagship event, to explore the changing nature of work. With the rise of AI-powered workflows and cross-functional collaboration at scale, the event spotlighted both the potential and the pressure facing modern teams.
Here’s what stood out:
Key takeaways from Elevate NYC
AI isn’t just a feature, it’s a workflow engine
AI and automation were headline topics across sessions, with monday.com unveiling new capabilities and showcasing how teams are embedding AI into daily operations. While these tools promise efficiency and scalability, they also introduce new dependencies and risks, particularly around data accuracy, process automation errors, and unintentional loss.
A recurring theme: as AI becomes more embedded in core workflows, so does the need for recovery safeguards. Teams are increasingly asking, “What happens when something breaks?” Backups that are purpose-built for SaaS environments—with granular restore, long-term retention, and platform-level visibility—are becoming table stakes.
Several talks emphasized how automation is accelerating decision-making, but also how misfires, from misconfigured boards to faulty scripts, are becoming more common. As one session pointed out, it’s no longer just about how quickly you can deploy; it’s also about how quickly you can recover.
Cross-team visibility is more critical than ever
Many attendees shared that their teams operate in hybrid environments, often combining monday.com with other tools like Jira, GitHub, Confluence, or Slack. While integrations can streamline work, they also create challenges when data lives in silos, too often unprotected..
In a standout session on enterprise integrations in the age of AI, panelists from monday.com, Rewind, Ziflow, and Make shared how orchestration across multiple platforms is becoming the new normal. But with that comes a heavier lift for IT and operations teams: ensuring visibility, observability, and recovery across an increasingly complex toolchain.
There was growing interest in unified strategies for backup and recovery across tools, especially as organizations scale their DevOps, IT, and business operations stacks. It’s no longer enough to have data protection for just one platform; resilience now means ensuring you can restore workflows wherever they happen.
Security and compliance remain top of mind
In a session on data protection, Rewind co-founder and CEO Mike Potter walked through the Shared Responsibility Model, clarifying what data protections platforms provide and what’s still on the customer to own. He also shared examples of businesses that lost critical project data due to assumptions about native backup coverage. The takeaway: audit logs, granular restores, and long-term retention aren’t luxuries, they’re foundational.
One of the most buzzed-about expo activations? A hat bar
While tech demos and product showcases filled the floor, Rewind’s booth managed to spark delight and conversation: a custom hat bar that gave attendees a personalized break from the tech talk. Between embroidered designs, it became a casual forum for discussing less-glamorous but mission-critical topics like backup frequency, restore time objectives, and data recovery after automation fails.
The bottom line
Elevate NYC made one thing clear: as the pace of work accelerates, so does the need for reliable, intelligent systems that not only power work, but protect it. From AI orchestration to compliance readiness, teams are rethinking how they build, how they collaborate, and how they safeguard the data that drives it all.
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