The number of businesses migrating to the cloud is constantly growing. Hybrid cloud is now considered a standard approach by organizations of all sizes, and many expect to move to multi-cloud in the future. But this growth is not without significant challenges. As more companies adopt cloud technology, challenges like exponential data growth, disparate data types, new security threats, and data management and reusability all make data protection more difficult and more critical than before.
In the newest version of his research, Key Criteria for Evaluating Hybrid Cloud Data Protection, GigaOm Analyst Enrico Signoretti says the sector has changed since his first evaluation in 2019—namely because users are more interested in security than ever before. And they are eager for products that can secure their data against an escalating threat landscape that includes ransomware exploits, just one of the many types of cyberattacks that businesses face today. The good news is backup software is becoming smarter in detecting malicious patterns and creating the necessary air gap to protect data, says Signoretti.
The pandemic has also impacted the sector, he says.
“COVID has changed how enterprises work. Cloud services and SaaS products are on the rise and vendors are rushing to protect these workloads and applications. The same goes for edge and endpoint data protection because many users still work from home or in very small offices.”
Moving forward, Signoretti has his eyes on Kubernetes investments. Many enterprises are adopting Kubernetes for container orchestration. DevOps methodologies are gaining traction and new programming models leverage containers and microservices to build portable applications across on-premises and clouds.
“For 2022 we expect more data management features and better support for Kubernetes,” he says. “Most of the enterprises are now well aware that multi-cloud also means data stored in several locations. Backup can be considered a consolidation mechanism and can help to analyze data for compliance, security, reuse, and cost savings. From the Kubernetes point of view, we will see more and more products supporting Kubernetes in the right way.”
Signoretti also thinks object storage is another trend to watch, as it is increasingly finding its way into IT infrastructure. With more object stores providing performance and new interesting features for index/search, data augmentation, and management, more backup solutions are striving to include object storage as a primary backup target.
Read the full report on Key Criteria for Evaluating Hybrid Cloud Data Protection.