N-able, Inc., a solutions partner, revealed results of a survey of IT service providers conducted prior to World Backup Day (March 31). Results show IT is moving away from outdated and costly technologies and policies, underscoring the need for a cloud-first approach to data protection, like its N-able Backup.
The survey reveals:
- Almost 75 percent of managed services providers (MSPs) said their backup services are profitable, but more work remains. MSPs not turning a profit on backup need to review their prices or control the costs of service delivery; moving to cloud-first data protection is one way to approach this.
- 57 percent of respondents agreed their backup retention policies were constrained by local storage capacity. The wrong policies have the potential to make costs higher than expected or break service level agreements.
- 45 percent agreed that backup appliances (including tiering to the cloud) are an expensive approach to data protection and are no longer desirable. Reliance on local physical storage media means a heavy lift for managing and maintaining vs. cloud-first data protection, which eliminates the need for storage management, upgrades, patching and other infrastructure-related tasks.
While many data protection products send backups to remote cloud storage as a secondary or optional step, cloud-first backup, like that offered by N-able, delivers a more efficient architecture that is better suited for today’s professional IT requirements.
N-able’s cloud-first data protection approach means faster more frequent backups and up to five times less storage consumption for the same number of restore points. Time and complexity are reduced, meaning IT staff can entrust backup management to more junior staff, freeing senior staff for more complex projects.
In addition, cloud-first data protection helps customers recover from ransomware attacks without costs spiraling out of control.
“Every business has its own needs, but given the prevalence of ransomware that can attack backup files on the local network, cloud storage should be the default for data protection, and local storage a secondary option,” said Eric Harless (pictured), N-able backup head nerd. “Ransomware threats show just how important it is to store backups off the local network, which is why an appliance-free, direct-to-cloud approach is the best approach.”
The survey highlights the importance of helping businesses understand the critical nature of data protection and shifting the conversation to one of business risk versus a check-box exercise.
The survey was conducted in early March 2022 among more than 100 N-able partners attending a series of Head Nerd bootcamps and office hours.
