Data Protection, Cloud, and Proff DraaS Delivers – Unitrends Survey

Unitrends, a Kaseya company, published the following 2019 report:

Introduction
For the fifth year in a row, Unitrends conducted a survey on the state of backup, recovery, DRaaS, and the increasing use of the cloud for data protection. More than 400 respondents from organizations of all sizes and industries took part.

The results highlight that data loss and downtime continue to plague organizations of all sizes. At the same time the cloud is playing an increasing role in data protection with a majority of organizations now using the cloud as a critical part of their data protection strategy. Cloud-based technologies such as archiving, DRaaS, and direct-to-cloud backup of PCs and servers are fast becoming mainstream. Finally we found a direct relationship between the use of DRaaS and very fast recoveries and reduced downtime.

Survey focused on four areas of data protection, critical responsibility for IT:
1) The effectiveness of today’s data protection strategies,
2) The use of the cloud as part of data protection,
3) The adoption of cloud-based storage, and
4) The effectiveness of DR-as-a-Service for quick application recovery.
At the end of each section is a link to follow if you are interested in learning more on each topic.

The effectiveness of current data protection programs
Organizations are still suffering unacceptably high rates of data loss and downtime. Unitrends has been conducting this survey over five years and found that consistently, 30% of responding organizations reported losing data as the result of an outage. This remains stubbornly high even as new data protection tools such as cloud storage, Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), and improved backup appliances have emerged over the same period of time.

Additionally, over 40% of respondents reported having a period of downtime in 2019. Despite all the new technologies, why is data loss and downtime continuing to plague enterprises? The combination of several possible explanations including decreasing IT budgets and headcount as well as the increasing complexity of IT infrastructures. Most corporate compute environments now include SaaS applications, cloud workloads, mobile workers, and vastly increasing volumes of data to protect. Another, more directly controllable potential contributing factor was found with responses to a question of how often respondents tested their ability to recover.

Enterprises continue to underestimate the importance of recovery testing. The data shows there has been only a small decrease in the percentage of organizations that test their recovery capabilities once a year or less from 2016 (59%) to 2019 (55%). A majority of enterprises don’t really know for sure if they can recover their applications after a downtime event as they test rarely or not at all. The little good news identified is that 12% more organizations at least test annually vs. 4 years ago.

The need to continuously test recovery tools is critical to ensuring speedy business restoration. Testing can be difficult, time consuming, and impact production servers or it can be automated with little to no negative impacts on the business.

For more information on DR testing and how best-in-class companies do it well, read DR Testing, Your Excuses, and How to Win.

The use of the cloud in data protection programs
The use of the cloud as a tool in data protection strategies has greatly increased over the last four years.

Today, 60% of responding organizations report using cloud features such as short term storage, archiving, DRaaS, and/ or as a direct backup location for PCs/servers. This growth in usage calculates to about a 10% CAGR from 2016 to 2019. Cloud usage is similar across organizations of all sizes. The survey found 61% of small (1-50 employees), 58% of mid-sized (51-1,000) and 60% of large organizations use the cloud as part of their data protection.

The cloud offers multiple technologies that are part of best-in-class data protection. There are two that are noteworthy.

First, directly backing up PCs/Servers to the cloud – WAN capacity and cloud reliability has increased enough to allow users to trust backing up their PCs and servers directly to the cloud. They are confident enough not to require backups to on-premises servers first. This tool is especially important for a highly mobile workforce that is only occasionally connected to the corporate network.

Secondly, for the first time in the 5-year survey, protecting SaaS applications with cloud-based backup made the list of the top five cloud-based data protection technologies deployed by the survey respondents. SaaS applications such as Office 365, Salesforce, and G Suite can simplify IT’s job by off-loading server and storage management to the cloud provider. An increasing number of enterprises now understand that they are as responsible for protecting their SaaS data as they are for on-premises data.

The future continues to look bright for the cloud. Of the 40% of organizations not currently using the cloud for data protection, 53% of them plan to adopt it within the next year. If these plans hold true, by 2020 80% of all organizations, regardless of size will be using the cloud for some form of data protection.

For more information on the use of cloud as part of your data protection strategy read the DCIG Cloud Data Protection Buyers Guide.

State of cloud storage
By far the most widely used capability of the cloud for data protection is off-site data and file storage. Overall 84% of organizations reported using the cloud to store data or backups with small enterprises reporting higher adoption (93%) than mid-sized (82%) or large (81%).

Fewer than 10% of respondents don’t use the cloud for file and storage or have no plans to add it this year.

The use of the cloud has risen at the same time that the volume of data needing to be stored has risen dramatically.

Data volumes requiring protection have been rising continuously over the last four years, forcing organizations to look for new strategies to control storage costs and reduce the capital expenses required for purchasing new storage devices. Organizations reporting they are required to protect over 100TB of data has risen from 11% in 2016 to 31% in 2019 with no real change in the mix of small/mid-sized/large enterprises across the years of the survey.

Cloud is an active part of the storage infrastructure of reporting organizations. A large majority of respondents reported that they had to recover at least some of their data from the cloud at least once last year. Over 10% reported recovering data from the cloud five times or more last year.

Growth in using the cloud for long-term storage, or archiving also increased greatly over the last four years. Compliance mandates and state/federal regulations require certain data records to be kept for periods between 5 years and perpetuity. Today a majority of organizations have chosen to store data in the cloud to protect it from inadvertent destruction and lower their storage capital and operational costs. The change in the reported rate of archiving in the cloud equates to over a 30% CAGR for the last four years.

For more information on the types of data requiring long term storage, and the role of backups in a data management program, read Backups Can Drive a Successful Data Management Program

State of cloud DRaaS
Cloud-based DR-as-a-Service is now an accepted and widely adopted tool in data and application protection.

DRaaS has evolved from a ‘bleeding edge’ service to wide adoption. 23% of respondents plan to add the technology to their data protection portfolio in the next 12 months, and an equal number would like to add it but have no real plans to do so. This means a full 80% of respondents understand that DRaaS has value for data protection and DR.

Large organizations have adopted DRaaS at the highest rates. Adoption of DRaaS by small and mid-sized organizations will increase as organizations discover that not all DRaaS services requires IT to become
experts in hyperscale clouds. Organizations can outsource DRaaS to experts at a fixed price and with little requirement for time or technical overview.

DRaaS is not just a rarely-used insurance policy. Almost 4 in 10 users failed over to their DRaaS infrastructure with 93% of them reporting that the performance was acceptable. The remaining 7% reported the process took too long or their applications did not recover properly.

This is a surprisingly high level of satisfaction given that some forms of DRaaS can be very technical and failover is required during times of emergency and high stress.

For more information on the types of data requiring long term storage, and the role of backups in a data management program, read Backups Can Drive a Successful Data Management Program

There is now strong evidence that DRaaS can consistently deliver very fast recoveries and reduced levels of downtime. For this section of the report survey respondents were divided into two groups – DRaaS Users and DRaaS Nonusers. They were then compared on two critical data protection metrics – the speed of recovery of failed applications and instances of application downtime.

DRaaS users are- almost twice as capable of recovering failed applications in less than one hour. Data analysis shows that organizations that use DRaaS (30%) recover failed apps in less than an hour than organizations who do not use DRaaS (16%). To gain this sort of advantage, organizations not currently using DRaaS should look for a vendor that offers SLAs that they can guarantee recovery in less than an hour.

In addition to the advantage of speedy recoveries, a majority of DRaaS users reported no downtime from a server outage last year (61%) while only 39% of non-using organizations had a downtime – free 2019.

While there may have been server failures, DRaaS user’s recoveries may have kicked in fast enough that business operations were little affected and no downtime felt by the business users

To learn more about how DRaaS works, watch the videos Introduction to DRaaS or The 5 Key Benefits of Unitrends DRaaS.

To read how DRaaS could save your business from extensive downtime read An Anatomy of a DRaaS Event.

Conclusions
Downtime and data loss cost enterprises incalculable amounts of money each year. The rate of downtime and data loss continues despite the adoption of new tools such as the cloud, DRaaS, and enhanced backup and recovery appliances.

The data shows an increasing number of organizations are recognizing the advantages of using the cloud and are adopting it as part of their data protection and recovery strategy. Increased adoption should lead to lower costs, improved services, and more vendors offering cloud products. It is almost inevitable that your organization will adopt new and expanded use of the cloud as part of your data protection and recovery strategy. Please use the links provided at the end of each section to learn more about how organizations are gaining cloud advantages today.

Read also:
Cloud Adoption and DR Testing Growing, Yet 30% of Organizations Still Experience Data Loss
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2018 State of Cloud, Backup and DR
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