In most respects, data backup has been done the same way for 30 years. Change is slower in backup than any other area in IT. The reason is that backup is a complicated problem.

Changed data is backed up every night from every server, with every operating system, running every type of application and stored on all types of storage.

As a result, backup applications, by the very nature of the task at hand, are complicated as they touch all aspects of the network, application servers and storage.

As organisations grapple with this complexity, here are 10 predictions for 2015 when it comes to protecting data.
 

1. Backing up to tape at the primary site will virtually disappear in 2015 and will be replaced with disk-based backup with data deduplication. Tape backup will be relegated to either offsite disaster recovery or for long-term version history.
    
2. Offsite disaster recovery will be split equally between tape and disk.
    
3. Public or vendor provided cloud backup will increase in popularity for SMBs with less than 5TB of data.
    
4. Backup and disaster recovery will remain a private cloud solution for organisation with more than 5TB of data.
    
5. Veeam will continue to take market share for virtualised backup but the share of traditional backup applications will hardly change.
    
6. Software deduplication will stall as customers realise its limitations.
    
7. DR as a service (DRaaS) will begin to be tested by organisations.
    
8. The “copy data” approach to backup will be relegated to large enterprise due to the high cost.
    
9. Primary storage snapshots will continue to be integrated with traditional backup applications as an additional source of collecting data for backups. This will begin the long-road merging of primary storage snapshots with traditional backup applications.
    
10. Backup across the board won’t look that much different at the end of 2015 as it did at the beginning of 2015 as changes in data backup traditionally move a glacier speed.
     

Although there is a lot of change afoot, the change will be slow and take place in pockets. Organisations will continue to push forward with data backup in phases and as a result will often have one foot in one camp and one in the other. For example, one part of the organisation may be using one backup application while another moves to a new backup application.

Similarly, while organisations have one foot in their own private network, they may have a toe in the cloud. In short, data backup may become more complex before it becomes more simple.

Sourced from Bill Andrews, CEO, ExaGrid Systems