In a recent ESG research survey, respondents were asked “If they could start from scratch, what would they do from a data protection solution perspective?” with less than half of respondents stating that they would use their existing vendor/solution.
As shown in the figure above, collectively more people would change vendors or go to a service than those that would stay with what they have.
- Some would say it is because their myriad current solutions are an ‘accidental architecture’ of disconnected products that presumably cause inefficiencies due to their separation.
- Some would say that as workload administrators (e.g., DBAs or vAdmins) exercise growing autonomy over their platforms, they are choosing data protection solutions that are specifically designed to work with Oracle RMAN or within vCenter/Hyper-V, as examples.
- Some would say that the lack of reliability in legacy backup tools that haven’t been properly maintained by the IT staff, coupled with antiquated features or methods from the vendors, have caused dissatisfaction by IT leadership who want to see “change.”
All of those folks are correct, with the result being that data protection technologies/vendors are not “sticky,” nor is “one solution to protect it all” as highly sought as some might suppose. In fact, later this summer, ESG will publish its latest Data Protection Modernization Trends report showing continued divergence in data protection tools, coupled with the technical and business drivers that are affecting those changes in data protection strategies, as well as products.
Where would you put yourself in this chart? Stay with what you have? A different solution? Or go to a service? Feel free to leave a comment below as to which you chose and why.
[Originally blogged via ESG’s Technical Optimist.com]