As time goes on, more and more companies are moving their servers to the cloud. 52% of organizations will host virtual machines within a “hyperscale” or service provider (MSP) in 2023 and 2024 as compared to 32% in 2020. The increased use of cloud services will have an impact on the organizations’ perspectives, responsibilities, and methodologies on how to operate and protect cloud-hosted workloads.
Veeam Software released a report on the cloud protection trends organizations will adopt in 2023. The report covers four key 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).
We have summarized it for you. Keep reading.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service
Smooth movement of workloads into, out of, and in between cloud platforms
- According to the report, less than 1/3 of the cloud servers were first launched in a cloud host, while 2/3 were migrated from the datacenter. However, 88% of organizations brought workloads back to their datacenters for several reasons as shown in the figure below.
- The flexibility of using cloud-hosted infrastructure implies that most organizations would want to move workloads in and out of different cloud platforms.
- Therefore, a data protection strategy needs to not only back up cloud-hosted workloads after they are brought online, but also ideally help with the migration from cloud to datacenter, or from one cloud platform to another.
Backup strategies include inputs from backup and cloud teams at a 2:1 ratio
- A good datacenter backup strategy includes inputs from at least IT Operations and backup specialists. Presently, cloud-hosted environments have an even better range of inputs comprising cloud specialists and application owners as compared to previous years.
- After establishing the strategy, most backups for cloud-hosted workloads are conducted by the same team that backs up datacenter workloads. According to the report, inputs are taken from backup admins (69%) and cloud admins (31%) at a 2:1 ratio.
Long-term retention applies to cloud-hosted data
- Organizations must keep track of older versions of data because of regulatory mandates, accidental overwrites/deletions/corruption, and ransomware. But sometimes companies don’t keep their data in the cloud for that long.
- This is going to change as compliance and legal teams become more aware of IT’s “cloud-first” strategies.
Cloud-powered data protection options
- Many organizations want to recover their workloads in the cloud instead of just restoring data from the cloud. This can lead to disaster recovery and other server failover scenarios.
- As organizations become more comfortable with cloud-powered scenarios, they will choose DRaaS to gain BC/DR expertise and not just a cloud infrastructure.
- 98% of organizations will utilize at least one cloud-powered capability as part of their data protection strategy in 2023 and beyond.
Platform-as-a-Service
Protection for cloud-hosted file shares
- Cloud-hosted infrastructure offers a variety of file-sharing services which include file shares running within hosted server instances and file-share services from hyperscale cloud providers themselves.
- While most server instances are still lifted and shifted, there is more diversity now means that data protection strategies for cloud-hosted environments in the future must protect a wider range of file-sharing services.
Protection for cloud-hosted databases
- As the primary means of “unstructured data” move into cloud services, “structured data” (databases) are moving to the cloud as well. This includes databases that are running on hosted server instances and managed database services from hyperscale cloud providers.
- Just like with protecting files in a cloud-hosted file share, there is the need to protect the range of databases that are now running from cloud services to be ready for 2023 and beyond.
Backup is required even though the service is resilient
- Cloud services are often very reliable, but this can sometimes lead organizations to believe that their data is safe and does not need to be backed up. However, cyberattacks and accidental data loss are still common causes of outages, so it is more important than ever to have previous versions of your data available for weeks or months.
- 59% of cloud-hosted file shares and 79% of cloud-hosted databases are relying on a BaaS provider, a third-party backup tool, or both.
Software-as-a-Service
Third-party data protection with enhanced M365 services
- 43% of Microsoft 365 (M365) organizations understand that the enhanced tiers of M365 are not just for ‘backup’ or long-term storage. 78% use a third-party backup product or a BaaS service to back up M365 data.
- Many organizations use Azure Storage as their repository for long-term M365 data. This can be a great option for data recovery, but it’s important to use separate credentials to minimize cyber risk.
Shift from “Admin-operated” backups to “the central backup team”
- A lot of people are involved in making decisions about how to protect M365. But now the people who usually back up the other parts of the IT system are also being asked to back up M365.
- 61% of backups for self-managed M365 organizations are done by backup specialists, while only 39% are done by M365 administrators.
- When BaaS is used to protect M365, the backup admins still do most of the backups. However, the BaaS team handles backups for 1 in 4 organizations.
Backing up data within Microsoft 365
- The M365 administrators and the backup specialists mostly agree on the most important reasons to back up as indicated in the figure below.
- The backup admins are more concerned about traditional data overwrite/deletion issues than SaaS admins, but both groups recognize that a backup tool (or BaaS) provided better capabilities than the built-in functions.
How organizations view BaaS and DRaaS
For businesses using BaaS, the top reasons for choosing it are operational efficiency: saving on hardware/maintenance costs, subscription payments instead of capital expenses, reduced operational complexity, and reduced hardware footprint. Organizations also believe that using a cloud service may not be cheaper than managing things themselves, but the value received from the cloud service is likely to be worth it.
While BaaS is mostly seen to improve operational efficiency, DRaaS has other benefits that are slightly more important for organizations. These benefits are grounded in the expertise that a DRaaS provider offers in addition to the IT staff, like expertise in implementing and planning and freeing up the IT staff’s internal experts for other tasks.
Cloud protection in 2023
- When organizations first added cloud capabilities to their data protection strategy, most of them started by using cloud storage, as part of a traditional data protection solution. 48% of the organizations say that they started with cloud storage but later added/switched to a managed BaaS provider.
- 46% of organizations choose to manage their backups but rely on a company that provides backup services to do the work for them. This can reduce the pressure on IT teams, since they don’t have to worry about maintaining backup servers, storage, software patches, etc.
- 31% of organizations would rather have someone else manage their backup operations. This suggests a shift towards wanting more “turnkey” service outcomes, with 63% of respondents preferring to manage backups themselves, and 13% wanting white glove service.
Source: Veeam
Also read: Gartner lists top 8 cloud infrastructure and platform services providers in 2022 Magic Quadrant
