The digital disruption has increased the influx of data even though organisations have limited ability to protect, retain, store, and govern them. Thus, implementing a unified approach for data protection is a strategic success to the organisations' digital transformation. Business or IT continuity and digital transformation are often considered as the primary investment factor for companies worldwide. Implementing such a strategic process increases the risk of growing cyber threats, stringency in compliance regulations, and IT consumption workloads. Thus, the need for data protection services among enterprises is growing.

Businesses are increasingly adopting cloud-based data protection and recovery services and solutions to manage data protection regulatory requirements and reduce in house IT functional workloads. Moreover, enterprises require uninterrupted and faster access to their critical data or a business application located over the cloud or on-premises in the current scenario. This is due to the need for instant recovery of data and services with minimal impact during unforeseen events. Thus, the data resiliency or the cloud computing environment that takes over the system and continues to support computing services when one of the IT infrastructures fails is considered as an integral part of the business continuity operations of organisations.

According to Grand View researchers, it is the increased dependencies on the recovery and backup solution are driving the data protection as a service (DPaaS) trend among businesses. With most businesses using cloud-based solutions to move their applications and data to the cloud for efficient collaboration purposes, they require core backup solutions and services to avoid any downtime or fail-over situation. Failure in downtime could affect business with high costs and business risks.

According to ITIC, a Boston-based research, and consulting firm, a study published in May 2019, a single hour of downtime per year costs at least USD 100,000. Furthermore, the study also highlights that around 85% of the enterprises require a minimum of mission-critical infrastructure for conducting business operations without any uninterrupted connectivity. Thus, with increasing digitisation and the need to have efficient business continuity, the demand for data protection solutions such as disaster recovery, backup, and storage services is growing.

Key findings within the report show that the storage as a service segment held the largest market share of 47% in 2019, because of the growing demand for cloud backup, cloud archiving, and platform attached storage solutions.  In terms of client base, it is the SME segment that is expected by the analysts to witness the fastest CAGR of 32.3% over the forecast period, and geographically the largest growth is estimated to materialise from the Asia Pacific sectors due to continued digitisation, business transformation and investment in cloud-based solutions among enterprises in the region.