Veeam Study Reveals Majority of APJ Organisations Struggle to Meet SLAs, Seek Data Protection Alternatives

With the ongoing discussions regarding the substantial financial and reputational ramifications associated with large-scale crises, spanning cyber attacks such as ransomware and weather-related disasters, it’s concerning that Veeam’s study discovered that in the APJ region, most organisations are falling short of meeting their cyber/disaster recovery SLAs, with only 59% of servers recoverable within expectations.

This is perhaps one of the factors why 2024 is witnessing a surge in IT teams considering a change in their solutions provider and roles, in the hopes that it will either radically improve their cyber preparedness and compliance postures or better the expectations between what business units are expecting and what IT is able to deliver.

During a recent media briefing, Jason Buffington, Veeam Software’s Vice President of Market Strategy, highlighted how loyalty may not be the top priority for today’s companies concerning their backup solution. He shared survey results from Veeam’s report revealing that 54% of organisations intend to transition to a different primary backup solution within the next 12 months.

However, Buffington clarified that this sentiment doesn’t necessarily guarantee that organisations will change their primary backup solutions. Instead, it suggests that these organisations will explore alternatives and are open to switching if the alternative proves to be more affordable and offers better solutions. Echoing Buffington’s sentiment, Dave Russell, Veeam Software’s Vice President of Enterprise Strategy, elucidated that the underlying factors behind the statistics shared by Buffington originate from varying degrees of dissatisfaction and concerns.

These “dissatisfaction and concerns” compel organisations to seek out alternatives capable of rectifying the gaps, thereby enhancing the reliability and success rate of their primary backup systems. Buffington also highlighted that the survey results indicate that 92% of organisations have increased their budget allocation for data protection in 2024, serving as a significant driver for organisations to explore other alternatives.

As the discussion progressed, Buffington shared that approximately 55% of organisations’ production workloads are in the data centre, while 45% are hosted in the cloud. He attributes this nearly even distribution of production workloads to the recent pandemic, during which organisations made a substantial shift to the cloud to fortify business resilience.

This evolving landscape implies that organisations are constantly migrating their workloads between platforms. Consequently, an IT team still reliant on legacy backup solutions may encounter challenges in effectively protecting data across both platforms. This hybrid trend has prompted organisations to seek alternatives that can offer more diversified and flexible data protection solutions.

Russell further emphasised that this pursuit is unsurprising, given the intricate nature of today’s digital environment. Additionally, the escalating threat of cyber attacks, which are becoming more frequent and sophisticated, adds another layer of concern. Legacy backup solutions may struggle to provide adequate protection against these evolving threats, especially if backup processes have not been implemented effectively.

In a light-hearted comment, Russell quipped, “You can’t restore what you haven’t backed up.” This playful remark underscores the critical importance of ensuring that data backup systems capture essential data accurately, as failure to do so could leave organisations unable to recover effectively from a disaster, resulting in extended operational downtime.

To mitigate this risk, Russell suggests that organisations that have not yet done so should consider transitioning to data protection and backup solutions offering superior reliability features, such as Continuous Data Protection (CDP). This ensures that all mission-critical data are consistently updated and backed up, addressing many of the challenges commonly associated with traditional data protection and backup systems, such as data loss or corruption.

Click here to view and read the full details of the report and statistics.