Guest Opinion: Why Your Future May Be Cloudy … And Why That's A Good Thing

By Omry Farajun, Storage Guardian

An interesting report recently landed in my inbox: Gartner's "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Disk- Based Backup/Recovery." As any VAR or MSP(managed services provider) knows, the findings of this leading IT market research firm can have a huge effect on the market, especially for enterprise customers. And, while it may be true that Gartner's reports and recommendations are beyond the budget of most SMBs, I believe that the so-called trickle-down effect holds true here: Gartner's IT recommendations for today's large enterprises are often predictors of what we might expect to see smaller companies consider shortly.

In the report, Gartner took a close look at backup and data recovery trends. Based on interviews and research of users, the firm detected an increasing consideration of cloud-based recovery implementations. Gartner noted that while some large-enterprise server data is being moved to a cloud-based backup/recovery solution, it was mainly midsize companies rather than large companies that are looking seriously at this approach for their enterprise server data, as well as for their branch-office and desktop/laptop data.

In fact, Gartner sees cloud-based recovery solutions becoming increasingly relevant for organizations of all sizes. According to the report, in the next three years, at least 30% of organizations will have changed backup vendors due to frustration over cost, complexity, and/or capability, and 80% of the market will have chosen advanced online or cloud backup software-only solutions over distributed tape or disk-based appliance backup approaches.

To me, this sounds like a big opportunity for VARs and MSPs who are selling into the SMB sector. For more than a decade, I've been working with hundreds of channel partners, helping them sell online (in other words, cloud) backup solutions to thousands of businesses, and from where I sit, this opportunity has never looked bigger. What's driving it?