It’s always been a myth that nobody changes backup solutions, but this year’s market research disproves that myth yet again as to who will or won’t be interested in making changes around their data protection plans or company roles. The 2024 Data Protection Trends Report reveals that not only are people looking at changing backup solutions, but they are also considering changing roles within their organizations. And these discoveries can be seen as just some examples of the far-reaching results of changes occurring within data protection strategies for 2024.

How Growing Budgets Affect Backup Choices

Coming into 2024, there is a growing understanding about how cyberattacks are no longer a question of ‘if’ but rather, ‘when’. As this awareness grows, organizations are funneling more funding into their backup solutions. The 2024 report shows that the vast majority of companies — 92%, or nine out of ten organizations — are increasing their data protection budgets. These budgets are increasing at an expected average rate of 6.6%. Which may sound like a small amount, but if you look at major analyst firms like Gartner and IDC, this is about double the average seen for an increase in spending in various other areas.

So, the fact that so many organizations are looking at updating their data protection solutions and spending more on backup — to the tune of nearly twice as much on average no less — is pretty telling. This shows that organizations have the budget to explore what data protection solution would be the best fit for their needs. And that is where the potential for change exists. With expanding budgets, companies can consider more comprehensive and complete backup solutions. In fact, the research report confirms that more than half of organizations plan on seeking out either a new backup solution or maybe even just switching from self-managed to a service that manages their backup for them due to their expanding budgets and heightened priorities.

Changes Are Happening on Personal Levels Too

Budgets and solutions won’t be the only changes. People are seeking role changes as well. This was a new question asked in the 2024 report: How likely are you personally to seek out a new job outside your current organization over the next 12 months?

Perhaps surprisingly, nearly half of respondents intend to seek out new job opportunities compared with only a third who are committed to staying where they’re at. This is a very worrying statistic that should alarm senior leaders. What if the team members that you are counting on to recover your business after a disaster or cyberattack leave right before your worst day? Would the organization survive? A lot of organizations utilize institutional knowledge and manual processes to keep their systems up and running. And when a disaster, whether it’s cyber, a mistake, or a natural disaster, strikes an organization could be even further stressed by the lack of expertise or manpower on hand to address the issue.

But this can also provide organizations some opportunity to source new talent if your company doesn’t currently have the necessary skillsets within your existing IT teams. If you feel like your organization doesn’t have a strong enough cyber resilience plan, or the ability to actively protect IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, containers, etc., guess what? 47% of the folks that do have those skills are potentially available to hire. And so, there’s an opportunity to increase your bench strength. Your organization can make use of these employee changes in the same way they can utilize the expanding budgets: to hunt around for the best fit for them and their backup needs.

Now, if you are one of those companies that does lose some skilled employees along the way, or even if you just want to re-balance your team’s skillsets and responsibilities, one answer that a lot of folks really ought to be looking at in 2024 is managed service providers. So, this is an opportune time to look into backup as a service (BaaS), disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), and cyber resiliency as a service (CRaaS). Organizations of all sizes can gain huge advantage by leveraging those services as part time or ad-hoc experts. One of the most powerful aspects about utilizing those kinds of experts is that very quickly someone can come in with a lot of domain knowledge, they just need to understand the specific requirements, but you can improve your recovery posture very rapidly by importing those skills.

Leaving the Myths Around Change Behind

Key takeaways from the research report show that there will be a lot of upcoming change — or at the very least the potential for change. Not only will expanding budgets and shifting trends allow for people to explore different backup solutions — and potentially make the changes necessary to benefit their organization. But the employees working at organizations may also be looking to change roles both inside and outside their current companies. These role changes, in a similar vein to how organizations can find a better backup solution for themselves, can open up companies to the opportunity of strengthening their employee skill sets when it comes to cyber protection.

To read more in depth about the factors and impacts affecting the IT landscape this year, check out the 2024 Data Protection Trends Report. 

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