Veeam Cloud Protection Trends Report for 2023 identifies what is driving IT leaders to change strategies, roles and methods related to both production and protection of cloud-hosted workloads
Veeam Software, the provider of Modern Data Protection, 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 recognise the increasing need to protect their SaaS environments. For example, nearly 90 per cent 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 as 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 centre, a surprising 88 per cent brought workloads from the cloud back to their data centre for one or more reasons, including development, cost/performance optimisation and disaster recovery.
- With cybersecurity (including ransomware) continuing to be a critical concern, data protection strategies have evolved, and most organisations 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 specialised expertise or added burden of cloud administrators.
- Today, 98 per cent of organisations utilise 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 recognised as a primary differentiator by subscribers choosing their BaaS/DRaaS provider based on business acumen, technical IT recovery architects, and operational assistance in the planning and documenting 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 per cent of organisations do not yet back up their cloud-hosted file shares, and 15 per cent 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, organisations 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 move fluidly from data centres 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.”
The Veeam Cloud Protection Trends Report 2023 findings include:
Software as a Service (SaaS):
- Ninety per cent of organisations realize they need to back up Microsoft 365. The report revealed only one in nine (11 per cent) of organisations do not protect their Microsoft 365 data — a promising majority of 89 per cent use third-party backups/BaaS or enhanced tiers of Microsoft 365 for legal hold, or both.
- As data protection strategies have evolved and ransomware continues to be a top concern, most organisations are delegating backup responsibilities to backup specialists instead of requiring each workload (IaaS, SaaS, PaaS) owner to protect their own data. This fuels the progression of backup becoming a conventional component tasked to the traditional backup admin versus the application team.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): While organisations of all sizes now embrace hybrid-cloud architectures, it is not a one-way journey to the cloud that reduces the importance of the modern data centre.
- Thirty per cent of cloud-hosted workloads were from “cloud first” strategies, whereby new workloads start in clouds at far faster rates than old ones being decommissioned in the data centre.
- Ninety-eight per cent of organisations utilise a cloud-hosted infrastructure as part of their data protection strategy, including cloud-storage tiers, cloud infrastructure as their disaster recovery site, or the use of BaaS/DRaaS providers.
- Eighty-eight per cent of organisations brought workloads from the cloud back to their data centre for one or more reasons (development, cost/performance optimization, or disaster recovery) — highlighting a need for 2023 data protection strategies to ensure consistent protection and the ability to migrate, as workloads move from data centre to cloud, cloud to data centre, or from one cloud to another cloud.
- 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. However, while nearly every organization acknowledged having long-term regulatory mandates, only half of the organisations retain backups of their cloud data for even one year.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): While most organisations initially “lift and shift” servers from the data centre to IaaS, most agree that running foundational IT scenarios, such as file shares or databases, as native cloud services is the future for mature IT workloads:
- Seventy six per cent run file services within cloud-hosted servers and 56 per cent run managed file shares from AWS or Microsoft Azure
- Seventy-eight per cent run databases within cloud-hosted servers and 65 per cent run managed databases from AWS or Microsoft Azure
Backup and Disaster Recovery as a Service (BaaS/DRaaS): Nearly every IaaS/SaaS environment also utilises cloud services as part of its data protection strategy in some form.
- Fifty-eight per cent of organisations utilize managed backup (BaaS) compared to the 42 per cent that utilises cloud storage as part of their self-managed data protection solution. Of special interest, nearly half (48 per cent) started with self-managed cloud storage but eventually switched to BaaS.
- Nearly every organization (98 per cent) claims to use cloud services as part of their data protection strategy, though that varies from cloud storage as a repository to full-fledged BaaS or DRaaS services.
- BaaS is predominantly sought for operational and economic efficiencies and assuring data survivability from disasters and ransomware attacks. Notably, BaaS is no longer seen as the “tape killer” that early pundits offered, with organisations stating that nearly 50 per cent of their data is still stored on tape during its lifecycle, regardless of their use of cloud-based data protection services.
- DRaaS is perceived as surpassing the tactical benefits of BaaS by providing expertise around BCDR planning, implementation, and testing. Expertise is perceived as a primary differentiator by subscribers choosing their BaaS/DRaaS provider based on business acumen, technical IT recovery architects, and operational assistance in the planning and documenting BCDR strategies.
This year’s report showed a significant shift from last year as customers are increasingly interested in outsourcing their backups and gaining a “turnkey” or “white-glove” management service instead of the internal IT staff continuing to manage BaaS-delivered infrastructure. This shift indicates that experience and trust in providers is increasing and could also point to challenges over the past year with the IT talent supply chain.
The Veeam Cloud Protection Trends Report 2023, born from the annual Veeam Data Protection Trends Report, is the result of a third-party research firm that surveyed 1,700 unbiased IT leaders from 7 countries (US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) on their use of cloud services in both production and protection scenarios to deliver the largest single view into the trajectory of hybrid strategies across the modern IT enterprise in today’s cloud-first digital landscape. The broad-based market study was conducted to understand the various perspectives on responsibilities and methodologies related to operating and protecting cloud-hosted workloads and considerations when using cloud-powered data protection.
