Businesses Increase Use Of Cloud Backup Solutions
Recent research reveals that 69% of organizations use backup-as-a-service cloud solutions, a percentage that has grown rapidly in recent years. And more and more companies are turning to these cloud services to back up critical business data, something that seemed unthinkable in terms of efficiency and security relatively recently and becoming more and more common.
The analysis firm ESG (Enterprise Strategy Group) has just published its research, The Evolution of Data Protection Cloud Strategies. They have surveyed 381 IT professionals linked to data protection strategies to know the degree of cloud services in this field. The main figure that its author highlights is that the percentage of organizations that use backup services in the cloud has increased from 39% in 2016 to 64% in 2020, which gives a measure of how the cloud is becoming increasingly a fundamental part of IT strategies.
Their summary explains that the adoption of services in the public cloud is growing rapidly, and now more and more companies are turning to them to protect the most critical data for the business, using native or third-party solutions. Thus, data protection in the cloud has become almost an indispensable norm in the digital and post-pandemic age, with a significant increase in the use of backup-as-a-service, disaster recovery-as-a-service, and object-based backups, on the cloud.
Although this research has also shown a worrisome level of users who have a wrong idea of the levels of protection they can obtain from public cloud services and SaaS providers and the risks of possible data loss or regulatory compliance. Thus, more than a third of organizations rely solely on SaaS providers for data backup and recovery in the cloud. Experts perceive this as a mistake, as organizations are responsible for their data and its recovery in the event of an error.
In this sense, Christophe Bertrand, senior analyst at ESG, explains that they have been following this trend, which they call “the great data protection / SaaS disconnect” since 2019, and states that “it is extremely worrying that our latest research confirms that the problem is not getting better. IT managers must evaluate their data protection strategies for cloud-resident data and applications, and technology providers must increase market awareness and education efforts, or companies will continue to risk the loss of BC e, even potentially damaging regulatory fines”.
On the other hand, their research shows that organizations impose stricter RPO requirements on their backup-as-a-service providers, with more than a fifth of companies expecting the same commitment from public cloud providers. Experts have also found that 27% of companies consider profitability as the main characteristic that backup solutions in the cloud should bring while operating at scale. And 25% have indicated advanced security functions, which indicates that companies’ priorities in this regard are cheaper than improving data protection. This should be taken into account when developing data protection strategies.
Additionally, 21% of organizations expect cloud solutions to provide them with granular restores, 20% tiered storage, and 19% the ability to deliver versus service levels and support newer technology deployments, such as those based on containers. In conclusion, ESG experts say the market has enormous potential for new vendor offerings. Other research shows that a fundamental shift from traditional backup and restore to a new generation of solutions is brewing. More autonomous, based on artificial intelligence. This opens up new possibilities for providers focused on innovation and smart data management, which provides a greater understanding of data and enables it to be used for technical or commercial purposes beyond just offering backup and restore.
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