Today, multi cloud strategies are gaining immense popularity owing to their flexibility as well as performance optimization which could be rendered by mixing & matching services. Like how these strategies increase, so does the need for multi cloud backup & recovery solutions are also surging. Multi cloud data backup & recovery solutions can backup data across cloud services from several providers. Most often, these solutions take backups from one service & store backups on another for disaster recovery purposes. Preferably, these solutions should also help in enabling recovery to different providers. Let us look at some of the top trends driving the enterprise data backup and recovery ecosystem.

Hybrid Cloud Backups

These solutions in the first place work by backing up data to an on-premises appliance & then start duplicating that backup to several cloud resources & this can help in ensuring that data is available with minutest latency while still maintaining the storage scalability. Several solutions can also help in synching on premise resources with data generated in the cloud, that allows 2- way backup.

When using hybrid solutions, on-site backups help in enabling to recover backups even more quickly, despite the internet connectivity. At the same time, cloud copies of those backups help in storing older backups for longer & render a mechanism for disaster recovery or failover in case on-premises resources are compromised.

In addition to laying out the backups across several resources, hybrid cloud backups can help in enabling firms to reduce their capital expenses. Hybrid solutions help in off-loading older backups to cloud resources, decreasing the necessity for on-premises resources.

Hybrid resources mean fewer disks for purchasing, managing or maintaining  and any backups that are  stored in the cloud are saved on infrastructure which is managed by the cloud service provider, which helps in converting the capital expenses to lower operating costs.

Furthermore, since it is a hybrid model you can pay down technical debt on your own resources while still gaining access to the benefits of the cloud & this makes hybrid solutions as one of the compelling option, specifically for organizations with infrastructures that are established.

One such company that offers cloud backup and restores services through its Cloud Backup platform is NetApp. The platform designed by the company protects on-premises ONTAP data in simple as well as cost-effective way.

Multi Cloud Data Backup & Recovery

One of the several ways where multi cloud backup & recovery solutions are built is through the utilization of containers & micro services & these technologies help in deploying workloads & data in several cloud environments without having to worry regarding compatibility between both the services/proprietary formats & this is because every container is built independent of host operating systems as well it contains all the required dependencies.

In order to back up these assets, one can make the image of containers which can be shared & deployed as needed across resources. As all containers possess the same code & can be accessed by using the same Application Programming Interface, & can then transfer workloads among the services with minute difficulty during outages. This flexibility can make firms to either avoid or minimize downtime in almost any situation.

A company that offers user-friendly cloud backup options via pay per month service which renders user-friendly access, cost-effective storage is Rackspace.

Disaster recovery & cloud-native backup

Since several firms have started adopting cloud only environments, cloud-native backup & recovery methods are highly essential & these solutions are built into cloud services & are provided directly by providers.

Cloud-native solutions can enable in easily automating backups at scale, & recover workloads as well as data globally with ease & these solutions are specifically essential for cloud-native applications. While there are 2 aspects to cloud-native backups the first includes the creation of container images, the other is the backup of supporting data as well as configurations.

For instance, if you are operating stateful applications which requires persistent storage, then a container image is not sufficient and this is where cloud-native backups come into the picture. Duplicating data that are related to databases, infrastructure configurations, networking details as well as associated files like media or codebases.

The road ahead

While Internet of Things devices are taking over several networks, right from digital assistants, to sensors, and to user interfaces at endpoints, these devices are collecting data and processing them, often at the edge of networks & on internal resources & this means that the data on Internet of Things devices is at least disconnected from the other systems. For instance, if any system is damaged then those devices may stay unaffected, and retaining the otherwise "lost" data. Such a type of detection can be used for triggering an upload of device data to the cloud in order to make sure it is not lost or IT teams can be alerted, rendering them time for downloading on-site backups to remote devices for later recovery.

Although Internet of Things is still not being acknowledged as a solution for backup & recovery, the capabilities it can offer is are useful integrations for the current solutions. As Internet of Things is evolving, these applications are sure to be adopted even more officially.