When I say “back it up”, I’m usually referring to applications and the virtual machines (VMs) they run on. But the phrase has another meaning: to support with evidence. For the purpose of this blog, when I say “back it up” I’m talking about supporting your business plans with hard market data.

I’m Doug Hazelman, vice president of product strategy and chief evangelist at Veeam Software. The first sense of “back it up” takes up much of my focus: Veeam specializes in data protection solutions for VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V. Our partner ecosystem includes MSPs, hosting and cloud service providers who use Veeam products to offer backup, replication, recovery, monitoring and reporting services to their customers.

Data Protection as a Service

These days, cloud-based backup, disaster recovery (DR) and storage fall under the banner of data protection-as-a-service, or DPaaS. Many MSPs view DPaaS as a way to generate additional revenue or attract new clients. It might seem an obvious direction for your company, but you’ll still need to sell your idea to management (and possibly also investors). That job requires a solid business case, and that’s where the second meaning of “back it up” comes in.

Ideally, you’d like to present a business plan loaded with market data — and plenty of justification for your DPaaS initiatives. But market research can be difficult and expensive to obtain. However, if you visit Veeam’s website now, you can access primary research on the DPaaS market. Veeam has licensed this research from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) and is making it available to you at no charge.

This market research, based on a survey of IT professionals from small, mid-market and enterprise-size organizations, provides the demand data you need to formalize your DPaaS plan. ESG polled IT managers on the types of DPaaS methods they plan to use over the next 12 months and how much data they expect to store in cloud-based data protection services.

It’s important to know what customers are looking for, whether you are building your own DPaaS offerings or reselling someone else’s. To that end, market research creates a good foundation for planning and launching a new venture. The ESG report can help you get started.

While MSPs can tap the ESG data to win support for new service lines, companies that already offer DPaaS can benefit as well. The research report reveals buying patterns that can help you see how well your offerings align with customer requirements and where you might need to adjust your pricing, packaging, channel strategy or marketing message.

Download the report today for free at go.veeam.com/dpaas-trends.

Doug Hazelman is VP of product strategy and chief evangelist at Veeam Software, the leading provider of virtualization backup and data protection solutions.