To IT professionals wrestling with defining a data protection strategy, an abundance of “choice” can be overwhelming. Disk, tape, private cloud, hybrid cloud, backup-as-a-service (BaaS), storage-as-a-service (STaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), and various permutations of those architectures are now available, which can complicate a technology-selection process.

In any case, it is clear that improving data backup and recovery is a priority for IT groups in organizations of all sizes, as ESG research shows it has consistently appeared as one of the most commonly identified IT priorities by senior IT decision makers participating in ESG’s annual spending intentions survey for several years running, and in midmarket organisations, improving backup and recovery often appears as the most-often cited priority. Evidently, backup is not “solved” yet.