Cloud Backup Revenue Opportunity in Supporting SMBs

Carl Oliver

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many organisations experienced rapid and dramatic digital transformation. For instance, research by McKinsey & Company points out that digital offerings have progressed in a matter of months, instead of the expected seven or so years they would normally have taken. Cloud-based technologies are at the core of many transformation projects.

However, as organisations adopt cloud in favour of traditional on-premises solutions, many would be mistaken in thinking that data doesn’t need to be backed up and that it is secure just because it has shifted to the cloud. This misconception is true across the small and midsized business (SMB) market, which makes for a market requiring support.

Tech companies (ITCs) need to acknowledge this backup problem that SMBs face and consult with them to develop their cloud strategies more effectively. As they do this, they need to collaborate closely with their cloud service provider (CSP) partners to help them profit from the revenue opportunity that is available when offering backup provisioning to customers. But, as ITCs and MSPs do this, what should they consider?

On-Premises vs. Cloud Backup Solutions

It won’t surprise the IT channel that protecting data and backing it up is critical. What is the difference between backing up data on-premises compared with cloud backup solutions?

As expected, an on-premises backup solution stores data securely on office-based hard drives. In principle, this is feasible, but what if a natural disaster occurs such as a pandemic, flood or fire? Accessing data becomes problematic and, depending on the situation, data could be lost forever. A case in point is this last year, as pandemic work-from-home restrictions prevented many people from working in offices, making the idea of accessing office technology and IT backups difficult. So, many businesses turned to the cloud for support. Which, rightly, highlighted the need for cloud data security.

Data Stored in Cloud Not Intrinsically Secure

There’s a common mistaken belief that just because you shift your applications and workloads into the cloud, all your data is completely secure. While the cloud offers many benefits, including the availability of data, it doesn’t entirely protect organisations from data loss or corruption alone.

For instance, a recent study found that 32% of companies using cloud had experienced data loss in the cloud across numerous threats. It points out that 64% of this data loss was accidental and that 20% was down to malicious intent.

Worse yet, the average cost of this data loss without a backup solution in place equates to almost $4,000 – not counting the potential reputational damage and fines from regulators. So, while cloud has enabled businesses to evolve and thrive, especially through the current pandemic, it’s clear that data stored in the cloud still needs to be backed up via a dedicated method.

This is why it is important for organisations to factor cloud back-up solutions into their long-term cloud and data-protection strategies. They are crucial and help address this growing risk of data loss that takes place, be that through accidental or malicious means.

Benefits of Backing Up Data in the Cloud

Cloud backup solutions come with several benefits for organisations. Many modern backup tools include enhanced security features and the ability to scale backups as required. They also generally offer quicker recovery times if backed-up data is needed. Further, better security protocols, encryption, software patches and updates mean that there are more effective security options for ITCs to provide to their end-user customers in the cloud, too.

Furthermore, by using the cloud, organisations also can …