At the start of 2020, 87% of public sector organisations surveyed by UKCloud expressed a desire to move traditional IT environments into the cloud. However, due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the rate of cloud adoption in the UK has grown significantly this year, as many companies not already in the cloud were compelled to migrate to it by enforced remote work. Not only this, but cybercriminals have taken advantage of dispersed workforces which has provoked a sharp rise in ransomware attacks this year, with 62% of organisations reporting being a victim of one.
It is therefore predicted that the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market will be the largest market segment, and is forecasted to reach $116 billion in 2020, due to the scalability of subscription-based software. The overall demand, legislation and compliance requirements — and need to protect worker data as businesses rapidly shift to remote work — are all factors creating a groundswell of demand for simple SaaS offerings (or SaaS-based).
The popularisation of SaaS
Businesses are increasingly understanding the value and the inherent operational simplicity that as-a-service models can bring to their IT environments. They are also looking for – and want to be ahead of the curve in adopting – modern consumption models and cloud technologies
to maintain a competitive edge in the developing digital landscape.
Customers across regions are tackling a very challenging time, as they try to figure out how they can protect and secure their environments. The conversation has now rapidly shifted from deciding if businesses should put workloads in the cloud to which workloads they should move to the cloud first. With the adoption of cloud, there comes the adoption of newer economic models that IT organisations may not historically be used to. Often, one of the ways to look at that is through an OPEX, rather than a CAPEX, model.
How to start a SaaS business in 8 steps
What can SaaS offerings offer businesses?
SaaS offerings revolve around simple subscriptions, predictable costs, and no large (or small) capital investments – making it an attractive and viable option for organisations today. SaaS becomes particularly valuable when trusted organisations collaborate to build a service. SaaS with data protection is one such example of this. It provides enterprise-grade protection with the same benefits and consumption model as existing SaaS solutions, capable of helping companies:
- Continually support cloud-first initiatives or journey to the cloud.
- Shed tech debt, without sacrificing security.
- Rapidly deploy and scale to support ever evolving workloads and SaaS apps.
Companies can seamlessly transition to cloud storage without the need to manage, monitor and secure it separately from their data protection service. One key consideration to keep top of mind, however, is that data stored in the cloud is still a business’s responsibility.
Businesses should be looking for cost-effective and enterprise-grade protection, without complexity. The best solutions on the market will provide SaaS data protection that’s capable of reducing costs, decreasing overheads and eliminating headaches. With this, companies can save precious budget finances on things like network, hardware and infrastructure expenses.
Furthermore, they will benefit from fully-hosted data protection, meaning they will never face installation, configuration or large upfront capital investments again.
More advanced SaaS models will also be able to deliver built-in protection against cyber-attacks through air-gapped and immutable copies of data, together with hardened security controls that prevent unauthorised access to backup data. Given the continued threat of ransomware, which has only increased this year, watertight protection such as this is invaluable right now for companies across all sectors.
Especially as the current business environment continues to shift and is shaped by developments in the pandemic, it is vital that companies invest in a model provided by a company with longevity, sustainability and profitability at its heart. This will allow IT departments to de-risk their entire environment with a modern data protection model, as opposed to looking at startups that may not be around for many more years.
With the future remaining uncertain indefinitely, now is the time for companies to utilise SaaS technology to solve their data protection challenges to best prepare.
Written by Jonathan Bowl, AVP & general manager, UK, Ireland & Nordics at Commvault
