In last week’s blog, we discussed why organizations of all sizes are embracing Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). This week we are going to dive into how to decide the best cloud service provider for your organization.

Put another way, let’s say we discussed why so many folks are interested in buying a new car. We’d cover buying considerations such as, what kind of car do you want or need? Will you pick a truck? A van? A Corvette? Once you know the make and model of car you are looking for, you still have the latitude of choosing WHO you are going to buy the car from. In other words, once you know what you want, you have a say in how, where, and from whom you are going to receive that product from.

Similar to how you are no longer limited to the car inventory at your local dealership, you aren’t limited to only choosing a cloud provider physically located near you. So, how do you decide? 

While Veeam won’t suggest one service provider for another, we did contract a research firm to ask 1,600 unbiased IT leaders how they chose their service providers among other BaaS & DRaaS topics. The 2024 Cloud Protection Trends Report set out to examine the data collected regarding how organizations choose their providers by asking several critical questions. Including:

• What services are you looking for?
• If you could change one thing about your provider, what would it be?
• What level of turnkey or concierge are you looking for?

What are Organizations Looking for?

Organizations are looking for outcomes.

When 1,600 organizations were asked why they chose their current cloud backup service provider, the top three reasons all related back to the “outcomes” (e.g., the capabilities provided by the technology and MSP teams).

Of particular interest, when organizations chose their MSP, 51% of respondents chose either “solution outcomes” or “expertise” as a primary determinant when choosing their managed provider. Of those solutions or areas of expertise, disaster recovery was the number one desired scenario, followed by hybrid-cloud operations and cyber resiliency.

If You Could Change One Thing About Your Provider, What Would it Be?

Most organizations are happy… right?

Having gone through the journey of choosing to leverage cloud services and selecting a managed service provider to fulfill those capabilities, it is worth noting that 79% of subscribers are either very satisfied, or completely satisfied with their current managed service provider.

That said, subscribers of cloud-powered protection solutions were asked what would cause their organization to switch to a different service provider. The top three considerations — or drivers of change — relate to what and how their production platforms are being protected. This includes assured capabilities for protecting cloud-hosted infrastructure (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS), which in most cases directly corresponds to the underlying backup software technologies being used.

In the early days, economics was historically the catalyst for considering cloud-powered services for organizations trying to move from large CapEx (capital expenditure) methods to recurring OpEx (operational expenditure) consumption models. Today, the consideration of economics more likely implies that some organizations are starting to perceive BaaS as a somewhat commoditized “utility” — i.e., where simply providing copies to an off-site location without delivering either expertise or additional capabilities is so mainstream that price becomes the determinant of choice.

Instead, many organizations are asking themselves, “Why BaaS when you can DRaaS?” — as higher-value outcomes such as improved disaster recovery or regulatory compliance serve as differentiators among technologies and service providers.

What Level of Turnkey or Concierge Are You Looking For?

“Different IT teams want different things and that’s ok” is a sentiment that hasn’t changed in the last three research surveys.

Both backup and DR can be achieved using strictly self-managed technologies, could be accomplished through subscribed infrastructure, or handed over to a service provider’s team.  The key question to answer for yourself is how much “management” of services do you want your MSP to “provide”?  Organizations have widely different expectations for the level of “concierge, turnkey, or white glove” services provided by their managed service provider. One question that has been asked in each survey since 2021 was, “whom would IT leaders prefer to manage the daily operations of their backup services?”

Interestingly, different respondents — even three years apart — show very consistent sentiments; IT teams have a wide range of expectations for the level of hands-off services provided by their MSP partners.

All these questions play a defining role in helping organizations to choose the best cloud service provider for their organization. While embracing BaaS and DRaaS is an important part of any modern data solution, it is also critical to employ these “as a Service” options with the CSP that meets your needs.

Veeam has a global network of service providers that deliver BaaS and DRaaS solutions with varying levels of management and services, powered by Veeam technology. To learn more about these managed offerings visit our Managed BaaS & DRaaS page. To find a partner, visit our partner directory.

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