As more and more data resides in online repositories, data backup and protection have taken on critical importance not just for huge corporations but for organizations of all sizes. In fact, these capabilities may even now be determining an organizations future. Veeam commissioned an independent survey of 1,550 larger companies (with over 1,000 users) across 18 countries to examine how data backup and restoration are currently being handled.
The survey reveals that as IT practices improve in the area of data protection and backup, a continually changing digital transformation is taking place. Surveyed organizations use a diverse mix of physical servers, virtual machines and cloud-hosted virtual machines (VMs), while around 10% of on-premises data systems will shift to the cloud over the next two years.
The surveyed companies expressed interest in ensuring that the cloud and data are more available to help improve customer experience and the impact of their brands. However, the research infers that by modernizing data protection with easy-to-use and flexible solutions, the survey states, businesses can greatly increase the protection and usability of their data while also freeing a lot of resources to focus further on their IT modernization and management efforts.
Backup challenges
Backing up and restoring data is a major concern because the data provided by IT is the heart and soul of modern companies. Downtime is another issue, with 95% of the surveyed organizations experiencing unexpected outages; at least 10% of servers have at least one outage of two hours on average, once per year. The researchers note, therefore, how important it is to modernize data protection for those inevitable outages. Doing so can help better manage operations, impact customer service, reduce costs and lessen employee task time.
Any time there is a change, and especially a large change like modernizing current systems, there will be challenges. Some include a lack of IT skills in a companys workforce, a dependency on legacy systems and a lack of staff and/or budget that ultimately prevents them from engaging in this digital transformation.
The surveyed companies indicated that they want to be able to move workloads from on-premises to the cloud, and they want cloud-based disaster recovery. Flexibility of solutions, the researchers conclude, is a big factor in the adoption of new systems and technologies. Data protection, therefore, must be simple, have no delays, and present an immediate return on investment (ROI). It must also be flexible enough to allow for data access from anywhere and at any time. It must continue to be reliable, as well, even as the IT environment evolves.
When planning to improve their current backup systems, companies are looking for reductions in costs and complexity, improved recovery time and reliability. Modernizing your backup into cloud data management can cut the cost of data backup and protection by 50%. That can lead to a 55% increase, says Veeam, in efficiency as well.
Most current mission-critical systems are still tied to legacy solutions, most often located on-site. Its implausible, then, to expect that organizations will jump directly to a fully modernized backup system. But by starting with a hybrid solution, where data is stored both on-premises and in the cloud, managed by a unified toolset, companies are seeing a 49% savings on costs, according to the survey.
Compliance and security
Another factor is that the cost of compliance is rising as governmental regulation continues to increase across the globe. Moving from ad-hoc or legacy systems to protect and audit data, as companies tend to do now, can result in what the researchers call isolated pockets of visibility. And these pockets can be targeted by cyber-attackers.
A primary challenge for organizations today is to make sure data is reliably backed up and instantly recovered when needed. As organizations continue to create more and more data, so must data protection and backup rise to the challenge. Modern systems must be more intelligent, anticipate user needs and meet user demands.
Building a new approach
Change is not without its hurdles, but the research demonstrates that organizations cannot afford to ignore the changing IT landscape. Data protection and backup have become mission-critical issues as data volumes continue to explode as data gets distributed across the cloud. Simple, flexible solutions are a must and they must also be affordable. A robust data management system helps organizations remain compliant and gain greater visibility to defend against attack. As IT leaders consider a new approach to data protection and backup, they should take into account the significant benefits of automated, cloud-friendly solutions.
