Veeam Software, a leader in Modern Data Protection, has released the findings of the company’s Cloud Protection Trends Report 2023, covering four key As-a-Service scenarios: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Backup and Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (BaaS/DRaaS).
The survey found that companies are recognizing the increasing need to protect their SaaS environments. For example, nearly 90% of Microsoft 365 customers surveyed use supplemental measures rather than relying solely on built-in recovery capabilities. Preparing for a rapid recovery from cyber and ransomware attacks was the top cited reason for this backup, with regulatory compliance the next most popular business driver.
Highlights of the report:
• While new IT workloads are launching in the cloud at far faster rates than old workloads are being decommissioned in the data center, 88% brought workloads from the cloud back to their data center for one or more reasons, including development, cost/performance optimization and Disaster Recovery.
• With cybersecurity (including ransomware) continuing to be a critical concern, data protection strategies have evolved and most organizations are delegating backup responsibilities to specialists, instead of requiring each workload (IaaS, SaaS, PaaS) owner to protect their own data. The majority of backups of cloud workloads are now being done by the backup team and no longer require the specialized expertise or added burden of cloud administrators.
• Today, 98% of organizations utilize a cloud-hosted infrastructure as part of their data protection strategy. DRaaS is perceived as surpassing the tactical benefits of BaaS by providing expertise around Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) planning, implementation and testing. Expertise is recognized as a primary differentiator by subscribers choosing their BaaS/DRaaS provider, based on business acumen, technical IT recovery architects and operational assistance in planning and documentation of BCDR strategies.
• Unfortunately, as is often the case for new cloud-hosted architectures, some PaaS administrators are incorrectly presuming that the native durability of cloud-hosted services relieves the need for backup: 34% of organizations do not yet back up their cloud-hosted file shares and 15% do not back up their cloud-hosted databases.
“The growing adoption of cloud-powered tools and services, escalated by the massive shift to remote work and current hybrid work environments, put a spotlight on hybrid IT and data protection strategies across industries,” said Danny Allan, CTO and Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Veeam. “As cybersecurity threats continue to increase, organizations must look beyond traditional backup services and build a purposeful approach that best suits their business needs and cloud strategy.
“This survey shows that workloads continue to fluidly move from data centers to clouds and back again, as well as from one cloud to another – creating even more complexity in data protection strategy. The results of this survey show that while modern IT enterprises have made significant strides in cloud and data protection, there is still work to be done.”
