Research Objectives
The broad adoption of public cloud services and containers as sources and repositories of business-critical data puts the onus on data owners to deliver on data protection SLAs for cloud-resident and container-based applications and data. Users are confused about the data protection levels that public cloud and Kubernetes environments deliver and about the changing protection options (DIY in the cloud, cloud-native third-party solutions, hyperscalers’ built-in features, as-a-service, etc.). As vendors and the cloud ecosystem evolve and add as-a-service consumption options, end-users are making incorrect comparisons and assumptions as well as failing to select the key data protection capabilities they need to maximize their cloud technology investments. This confusion leads to lasting challenges, and the market is now at a crossroads.
To assess the state of cloud-based data protection and the as-a-service market (e.g., in cloud/to the cloud, BaaS, and DRaaS), TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) surveyed 397 IT professionals in North America (US and Canada) familiar with and/or responsible for data protection technology decisions for their organization, specifically around data protection and production technologies that may leverage cloud services as part of the solution. This study sought to answer the following questions:
- How do organizations define backup-as-a-service (BaaS) and disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS)?
- What is the adoption status of BaaS, DRaaS, and cloud backup/disaster recovery targets?
- What groups/roles within organizations are involved with the evaluation of and influence the purchase of public cloud-based data protection solutions? Which group/role typically makes the final purchase decision?
- How many times in the last 12 months have organizations had to recover data from on-premises and/or public cloud environments? What percentage was recovered on average in those cases?
- What were the reasons for data recovery efforts in the last 12 months?
- Would organizations consider a public cloud-based data protection solution that includes an on-premises cache or storage for local recovery to improve data recovery SLAs (e.g., RPO)?
- What approaches currently protect applications/workloads/data in public cloud infrastructure services?
- What types of data protection technologies are used in these approaches, and which assets are protected?
- How is critical public cloud-based unstructured data protected, and what are acceptable recovery times?
- What is the impact on teams of the daily management and maintenance of public cloud data?
- How many full-time staff are allotted for data protection objectives associated with cloud data?
- What methods do organizations use to protect data within virtual machines on public cloud infrastructure?
- What are organizations’ preferred approach to protecting multiple unique public CSP environments?
- How do organizations estimate the costs of their cloud backups and recoveries for hyperscalers?
- What approaches do organizations take to ensure cost-efficient data tiering for the data protection storage supporting their public cloud infrastructure-resident applications?
- Does organizations’ backup software handle the appropriate tiering of data written to object storage?
- How important is it to have a container backup and recovery management solution that works across multiple disparate public cloud infrastructure services going forward?
- Do organizations’ container backup schemas integrate with their current data protection environment?
Survey participants represented a wide range of industries, including financial, manufacturing, retail/wholesale, and healthcare, among others. For more details, please see the Research Methodology and Respondent Demographics sections of this report.
