Reliable and affordable managed cloud backup solutions are critical to the success of small and midsized cloud service providers, according to a recent survey from CloudBerry Lab.

The backup and management solutions vendor surveyed 434 U.S.-based IT resellers and MSPs to determine the level of impact that cloud backup solutions have on their businesses, with specific questions posed regarding the major trends and factors impacting the decision-making process for SMBs when choosing a cloud backup solution.

According to the survey, demand for cloud backup solutions is expected to increase over the next 12 months, with 79 percent of respondents predicting an uptick in customer demand. Additionally, 51 percent of respondents said that they could not effectively compete without cloud backup solutions as part of their portfolios. Only 29 percent considered cloud backup solutions to be a very small part of their total revenues.

Unsurprisingly, reliability and cost are the two considerations that factor most into resellers’ cloud backup decisions; however, resellers and MSPs are more concerned with reliability of service over price when it comes to ultimately choosing a solution for their customer data.

While there have been various studies and research regarding the relative safety of cloud backup solutions, SMBs who have yet to adopt cloud backup, the need to keep certain sensitive data stored on-premise was the number one concern, followed by unavailable or slow backup resulting from a poor internet connection, according to the study. The data proves that while the acceptance for cloud solutions has come a long way in the past several years, there are still a number of enterprises who do not fully understand the nuances of cloud computing.

Finally, about 75 percent of resellers said their managed cloud backup solutions serve as a gateway to upselling other, more high-margin services, as opposed to about 25 percent of respondents who said they only sell cloud backup as a service by itself.

“Clearly, resellers understand the distinction between full-featured, managed cloud backup solutions and solutions that do not offer much beyond the basic ability to store data in the cloud,” said CloudBerry Lab CTO Alexey Serkov, in a statement. “Many SMBs may not fully understand the major differences between the two, but resellers and MSPs serving them know exactly what’s required, and they demand backup solutions combining the best features, performance and flexibility while allowing them to grow their market share.”

For more information on the many cloud backup solutions on the market, as well as the best ways to maximize your cloud backup business, be sure to stay tuned to Talkin Cloud and follow Michael Cusanelli @MCusanelliSB.