More than 1,500 global enterprises were surveyed for the Veeam 2020 Data Protection Trends Report to understand their approach toward data protection and management. The survey also inspects how they expect to be prepared for the IT challenges they face. According to the report, respondents claim that IT has become the heart and soul of most organizations. However, 40% of the organizations are still relying on legacy systems to protect their data.
Other highlights of the report include
The study also shows that 95% of the organizations still suffer outages and these outages last 117 on average. Veeam also states that an hour of downtime from a High Priority application is estimated to cost $67,651, while this number is $61,642 for a Normal application.
- The No. 1 challenge that will impact organizations within the next 12 months is cyber threats (32%). Shortage of skills to implement technology (30%) and meeting changing customer needs (29%) were also cited as key hurdles in the next 12 months.
- Lack of staff to work on new initiatives (42%) was cited as the most impactful data protection challenge organizations currently have. Lack of budget for new initiatives (40%) and lack of visibility on operational performance (40%) were also cited.
- Over half (51%) of respondents believe DX can help their organization transform customer service. Almost half said it could transform business operations (48%) and deliver cost savings (47%).
- Almost one-quarter (23%) of organizations describe their progress towards achieving DX initiatives and goals as mature or fully implemented.
- Almost a third (30%) of organizations are currently in the early stages of implementing or planning DX.
- Over a third (39%) of respondents said the ability to improve reliability of backups is the most likely reason to drive their organization to change its primary backup solution. 38% cited reduced software or hardware costs and 33% said improving return on investment.
- Almost a quarter (23%) of organizations’ data is replicated and made business continuity (BC)/DR capable via a cloud provider. Over a fifth (21%) of data across organizations globally is not replicated or staged for BC/DR.
- Over a quarter (27%) of organizations’ data is backed up to the cloud by a Backup as a Service (BaaS) provider. 14% of data across organizations globally is not backed up.
- Over two in five (43%) organizations plan to leverage cloud-based backup managed by a BaaS provider within the next two years.

Danny Allan, CTO and SVP of Product Strategy at Veeam said,
“Technology is constantly moving forward, continually changing, and transforming how we do business – especially in these current times as we’re all working in new ways. Due to DX, it’s important to always look at the ever-changing IT landscape to see where businesses stand on their solutions, challenges, and goals. It’s great to see the global drive to embrace technology to deliver a richer user experience, however the Achilles Heel still seems to be how to protect and manage data across the hybrid cloud. Data protection must move beyond outdated legacy solutions to a higher state of intelligence and be able to anticipate needs and meet evolving demands. Based on our data, unless business leaders recognize that, and act on it, real transformation just won’t happen.”