Market disruption means opportunity. There are two major events currently driving three key opportunities for service providers: cyberthreats (primarily ransomware) and the VMware acquisition by Broadcom. The three key opportunities are modernization, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), and Backup as a Service (BaaS) for Public Cloud.
Migrate and Modernize
I suspect the reaction to the changes happening at VMware will spur the next “digital transformation” (remember when everything was about digital transformation?). Now it’s all about “migrate and modernize.” As organizations (service providers included) pause to evaluate their virtual footprint, there are a few paths they may choose:
- Stay with VMware and find a partner to work with
- Look at alternative hypervisors or platforms to migrate to
- Or a combination of the two
Service providers can be a trusted advisor to help an organization decide the best course of action. The ability to refactor and modernize on a new platform presents endless opportunities – a service provider’s cloud, hyperconverged infrastructure, containers, etc. One thing we know for sure, Veeam can support in all these scenarios to ensure data resilience end-to-end.
Public Cloud Adoption is Catching Like Wildfire
Organizations see value in hyperscale public cloud offerings. In fact, 71% state that hyperscale cloud storage is the ideal location for an off-site repository.1 With cyberthreats and the need for off-site backup copies that are immutable, public cloud certainly presents an attractive option. Expertise and management of this data hosted is still required, something organizations may not have in their current IT staff.
Additionally, service providers can provide BaaS for public cloud workloads. As new workloads often start in the cloud, it’s important to ask how these workloads are being protected. Like Microsoft 365, the Shared Responsibility model also applies here: cloud vendors are responsible for infrastructure maintenance and uptime, while data is the responsibility of the customer. This data is subject to the same compliance and security standards as data stored on-site. And don’t forget about employing the 3-2-1-1-0 rule.
The cloud certainly has its advantages and can appear simpler on the surface. The reality is it can be complicated. From in house skillsets required to leverage public cloud services to controlling costs, ensuring the cloud-hosted data is properly protected and readily available in the event of downtime (service outage, accidental deletion, etc.), service providers can step in with their expertise and simplify hybrid and multi-cloud data protection.
Up the Game With DRaaS
In a digital world, downtime isn’t an option. Business continuity with the economic advantage provided by the cloud is a prime opportunity for organizations of any size to leverage DRaaS. Like the cloud, disaster recovery is complicated. It requires highly skilled individuals to plan and execute, ensuring applications and workloads failover to a secondary site are brought online in the proper order with appropriate resources. Furthermore, when the ‘event’ is over, the ability to failback to main production site including any of the changes that occurred are seamlessly integrated into production. It is because of this specialized skillset that organizations look to DRaaS providers for expertise on implementation and recovery, plan development and prioritization, among other economic benefits.1
From the lens of ransomware, we don’t want to replicate infected data so backups are still a critical component. This is why standardizing on a single platform to support backups, replicas and Continuous Data Protection (CDP) can be a gamechanger. With this flexibility, you can deliver the outcomes customers need without “over insuring” their DR outcomes. Not all workloads need or require CDP with strict RTOs.
Veeam can support partners like you in capitalizing on these trends. With Veeam, you can protect these new workloads and with our portable data format, ensure customers can migrate without the worry of data loss. The best part? No data lock-in. Customers can always get their data back.
To learn more about cloud trends and insights for service providers, check out this executive brief. We dive into public cloud and DRaaS sharing insights gleaned from the Cloud Protection Trends 2024 report.
1 Cloud Protection Trends 2024 Report