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VMblog Expert Interview: Paul Strelzick of Veeam Reveals Findings from 2020 Data Protection Trends Report

interview-veeam-strelzick 

Veeam recently announced findings from its 2020 Data Protection Trends Report.  Previously delivered as the "Veeam Availability Report" and the "Cloud Data Management Report," the research project has been rebooted to deliver one of the most comprehensive survey's in the backup & availability industry reflecting status quo, trends and challenges companies face.

To find out more, VMblog reached out to Paul Strelzick, General Manager & Senior Vice President of Americas, Veeam.

VMblog:  Veeam recently conducted an independent study.  What does the study cover and why was this data important to discover?

Paul Strelzick: The Veeam 2020 Data Protection Trends Report was created to help us to understand how the enterprise IT landscape approaches data protection and management today, and how they expect to be prepared for the IT challenges they face - including reacting to demand changes and interruptions in service, as well as more aspirational goals of IT modernization. 

Technology is constantly moving forward, continually changing and transforming how we do business, and Digital Transformation (DX) has become a top agenda item for the enterprise to optimize business and customer operations.

VMblog:  How many people did the study survey and what were their demographics?

Strelzick: We received 2,225 total respondents, 1,550 global enterprise respondents to the industry-wide survey and 675 global respondents to the Veeam-only customer survey. We're pleased to have achieved such a great sample size, almost five times greater than most standard industry research studies.

VMblog:  What were the most important findings from the study?

Strelzick: Our findings show that while DX is being embraced, almost half of global organizations are being hindered in their DX journeys, with the barriers to success including unreliable, legacy technologies and lack of IT skills or expertise. Many organizations (40%) still rely on legacy systems to protect their data without fully understanding the negative impact this can have on their business. Shortage of skills to implement technology (30%) and meeting changing customer needs (29%) were cited as key hurdles in the next 12 months. Organizations further cited that lack of staff to work on new initiatives (42%) was the most impactful data protection challenge, with lack of budget for new initiatives (40%) and lack of visibility on operational performance (40%) also cited.

Respondents stated that data delivered through IT has become the heart and soul of most organizations. It's no surprise how important data protection has become within IT teams, both in backing up and restoring data and extending business capabilities. It was surprising to see that the most common and traditional of hurdles, lack of resources and lack of skill, remain true to this day, even as we move towards a more cloud-driven, digitally transformed industry.

VMblog:  What are some of the biggest revelations that were uncovered by this research?

Strelzick: The number one challenge that will impact enterprise organizations within the next 12 months are cybersecurity and ransomware threats (32%). Almost every company admitted to experiencing downtime, with 1 out of every 10 servers having unexpected outages each year - problems that last for hours and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars - and this points to an urgent need to modernize data protection and focus on business continuity to enable DX.

Putting this into further context, organizations consider 51% of their data as ‘High Priority' versus ‘Normal'. An hour of downtime from a High Priority application is estimated to cost $67,651, and an estimated $61,642 for a Normal application. With such a balance between High Priority and Normal in percentages and impact costs, it's clear that every piece of data in your organization matters, and that any amount of downtime is intolerable. With the average ransomware attack costing organizations $80,000 to restore lost data, we found that the average enterprise organization is now investing $485,000 annually on data protection efforts.

VMblog:  What interested you the most about the findings and why?

Strelzick: Enterprises know they must continue to make progress with their IT modernization and DX initiatives in order to meet new industry challenges, and the most defining aspects of a modern data protection strategy all hinge upon the utilization of various cloud-based capabilities. These capabilities include an organizations' ability to do disaster recovery (DR) via a cloud service (54%), followed by the ability to move workloads from on-premises to cloud (50%), and the ability to move workloads from one cloud to another (48%).

These days, data and applications aren't constrained to single servers like they once were - they spread across data centers and clouds through file shares, shared storage and even SaaS-based platforms. As such, data protection can no longer be tied to on-premises, physically-dedicated environments and companies must have flexible licensing options to easily move to a hybrid/multi cloud environment.

VMblog:  After everything you've learned from this survey, what's next for Veeam?  How do you respond to the challenges found within the survey?

Strelzick: We see this as an important milestone and set of guidelines as we strive to meet customer requirements and be the top provider of backup solutions for cloud data management in the market. Half of global enterprise businesses recognize that cloud plays a pivotal role in today's data protection strategy, and it will most likely become even more important in the future. For a truly modernized data protection plan, a company needs a comprehensive solution that supports cloud, virtual and physical data management for any application and any data across any cloud

VMblog:  Finally, where can readers go to learn more about the survey results?

Strelzick: You can read and download the full report at https://go.veeam.com/wp-data-protection-trends-2020.

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Published Friday, June 05, 2020 7:38 AM by David Marshall
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