The growing reliance on public cloud services as both a source and repository of mission-critical information means data owners are under pressure to deliver effective protection for cloud-resident applications and data. Indeed, cloud is now front of mind for many IT organisations. According to recent research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) cloud is “very well-perceived by data protection decision makers”, with 87% of saying it has made a positive impact on their data protection strategies.
However, many organisations are unclear about what levels of data protection are provided by public cloud infrastructure and SaaS solutions, increasing the risk of potential data loss and compliance breach. At the same time, on-premises backup and disaster recovery strategies are increasingly leveraging cloud infrastructure, resulting in hybrid data protection strategies that deliver inconsistent service levels.
Despite these challenges, there are a significant number of organizations that still don’t use a third-party data protection solution or service. This should be cause for concern considering that everything an organization stores in the cloud, from emails and files to chat history and sales data (among many other datasets) is its responsibility and is subject to the same recoverability challenges and requirements as traditional data. In fact, only 13% of survey respondents see themselves as solely responsible for protecting all their SaaS-resident application data.
