Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2025.  Read them in this 17th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

By Justin Moran, chief strategy office, Cloud IBR

Ransomware is still wreaking havoc when it comes to data protection. Natural disasters continue taking companies offline, causing big downtime losses. Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) - and 99% of U.S. businesses alone are small - can't afford full disaster recovery (DR) and are rolling the dice.

These challenges remain as we enter 2025, but throughout the year, there will be interesting developments and changes in business continuity and data protection. Driving much of it will be managed service providers (MSPs), whose model and technology will continue to mature, enabling them to better protect businesses, especially SMBs.

Here are developments you can expect. 

It's what you know

A lot of people have over-positioned DR while undervaluing backup. This has created a middle category of companies that fall victim to either overpaying or going without sufficient data protection. But in recent years, we've learned layers make for stronger data protection and business continuity plans - and buyer awareness is also growing.

That said, technology salespeople will need to become knowledge experts and educational resources in 2025. Further, you'll see managed service providers (MSPs) taking a boutique, white-glove approach, more focused on education, expertise and capabilities, as well as specific types of businesses.

Big news for smaller businesses

In a recent Veeam survey of IT leaders, roughly half said they suffered a ransomware attack one to three times in 2023, with another 26% reporting four or more. While larger enterprises can afford $10,000 for traditional DR, many SMBs cannot and take a gamble, saving the funds and praying they are not hit next. The problem is, with disasters and especially with ransomware, it's just a matter of time before that happens. 

With this in mind, an emerging as-a-service approach is going to gain a lot of SMB attention. This will unlock an alternative, cost-effective way for SMBs to access fully automated backup and restoration. Called backup recovery as a service (BRaaS), it removes excess features typically found in large enterprise solutions, bringing the masses an affordable and powerful DR option. 

Compliance complexity

Audit requests for compliance, security and other requirements, which were percolating in 2024, will come to a boil in the year ahead. This will particularly impact SMBs, cloud providers and MSPs, both operationally and financially. Providing a Service Organization Control (SOC) report may no longer be enough - you will need one for any cloud you are using. So, if you are using a sub-vendor, you will have to prove they are compliant, too. This increases complexity and consumes time and money. MSPs able to automate tasks and produce the right reporting, or vendors with technology that has such built-in features, will help organizations navigate it.

The cost of doing nothing

When it comes to business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR), most SMBs can only afford the basics. Having handled this on-premises for so long, they're accustomed to buying devices and living invoice to invoice. Despite increasing threats, most are doing nothing more and feel they have found the most cost-efficient route. In reality, the ROI of MSPs illustrates how SMBs are missing out on greater savings and benefits, all while increasing their risk.

MSPs eliminate CAPEX because no additional equipment is needed, neither is ongoing maintenance. Instead of hiring additional people, MSPs have experts on staff so OPEX is contained. And if your infrastructure gets taken down, you likely will not get sued because that liability has also been outsourced. In the year ahead, SMBs will increasingly realize there is a cost to doing nothing and take action.

The inevitability of immutability

In 2024, I was astounded by the number of big companies that found themselves in the news for paying a ransom because their backups were affected. We use immutability in our solutions, and in every ransomware attack, our partners have found the backups to be fine. And by leveraging immutable Veeam backups stored in Backblaze, Wasabi Object Storage, or directly from Veeam Cloud Connect, recovery can be completed in hours.

Immutability is one of the best things that has happened to backup and DR but most of the world is still not using it. The reason is immutability requires more technical expertise to enable because it only runs on Linux, not on Windows. But immutability makes data read-only, so ransomware attackers can't encrypt it at the time of attack, ensuring recovery from recent backups.

In 2025, companies en masse will either set up immutability themselves or hire someone to do it for them. It's the single most important step they can take toward mastering disasters.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Justin Moran is chief strategy officer of Cloud Instant Backup Recovery (Cloud IBR), provider of a revolutionary backup recovery SaaS platform empowering businesses of all sizes against data disruption.