1 Executive Summary

The KuppingerCole Leadership Compass provides an overview of the Cloud Backup for AI Enabled Cyber Resilience and the vendors in this segment. It covers the trends that are influencing this market segment, how it is further divided, and the essential capabilities required of solutions. It also provides ratings of how well these solutions meet our expectations. This analysis is based on the KuppingerCole Leadership Compass Methodology.

This Leadership Compass covers solutions that …

Provide backup, restoration, and disaster recovery of all data held in today’s hybrid IT services into the cloud. It provides an assessment of the capabilities of these solutions to meet the backup and disaster recovery needs of organizations with a particular focus on cyber resilience supported by various forms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as Machine Learning (ML), GenAI (Generative AI), and Large Language Models (LLM).

Organizations and society have become dependent upon digital services which increases the business impact of cyber threats. Recent incidents demonstrate how ransomware attacks and even mistakes can disrupt public services including healthcare. Governments around the world have recognized the need for improved digital resilience. For example, in the EU the Directive (EU) 2022/2555 (known as NIS2) aims to strengthen digital resilience by ensuring robust cybersecurity practices. In addition, the Digital Operational Resilience for the Financial Sector Regulation EU Regulation 2022/2554 (known as DORA) extends this to the financial services industry.

To achieve cyber resilience, organizations need to take steps beyond preventing cyber-threats from impacting their digital infrastructure – they must also be able to respond to and recover when incidents occur. To achieve this it is essential to backup, protect, and restore not only the business data, but also the data which defines today’s virtual and cloud IT infrastructure, and applications.

This report offers an in-depth analysis of the market in solutions designed to ensure backup, restoration, and disaster recovery of data within today's hybrid IT services. The market for these solutions is well established and was valued at $5.75 billion in 2023 and is growing annually at 18.7%. The market is continuing to evolve with the emergence of cloud-native solutions that exploit AI and ML.

The market is segmented into enterprise solutions from long standing vendors, cloud-native solutions from emerging vendors, and includes solutions tailored for managed service providers as well as end user organizations with solutions covering on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. Major cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud include integrated backup services, as well as open market solutions for the data held in their services. The solutions are delivered through various models, including physical and virtual appliances, multi-tenant public cloud services, and single-tenant services.

The essential capabilities of these solutions include data backup, recovery, continuous data protection, continuous replication offering near-zero recovery time, non-testing of restoration, and long-term data retention. Advanced ransomware protection features, such as immutable and air-gapped backups, and proactive scanning, are also vital features. Ease of deployment and administration, robust data security, and compliance support are also critical. This report evaluates solutions against these including their ability to secure data in transit and at rest, manage encryption keys, identify, and protect sensitive data, as well as providing comprehensive disaster recovery support.

AI and ML play a significant role in enhancing cyber resilience, through capabilities such as advanced threat detection, automated backup processes, data sensitivity analysis, and improved disaster recovery. Solutions should exploit these technologies to predict and prevent attacks, ensure continuous data protection, and automate routine tasks to reduce human error. They can also assist in data classification to ensure appropriate protection levels and compliance with regulatory requirements.

This report identifies overall market leaders, including Cohesity, Commvault, Druva, HYCU, Veeam, and Veritas, based on their comprehensive capabilities, innovation, and market presence. Product leaders are noted for their feature-rich offerings, while innovation leaders are recognized for their forward-looking capabilities that anticipate market needs. Market leaders are characterized by their global reach and robust customer bases. Evaluations of each vendor detail their strengths and challenges, highlighting how they address various aspects of data protection and cyber resilience.

Organizations depend upon these solutions to meet their needs for digital resilience and regulatory compliance. AI and ML technologies are central to making these solutions more efficient and effective in ensuring efficient and effective cyber resilience. The vendors covered by this report offer a range of solutions to meet diverse organizational needs, ensuring comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery capabilities.

1.1 Key Findings

• Organizations and society have become dependent on digital services, and this increases the need for resilience against cyber threats like ransomware.
• Regulatory frameworks, such as the EU's NIS2 Directive and the Digital Operational Resilience for the Financial Sector Regulation (DORA), underscore the need for cyber resilience.
• To achieve cyber resilience, organizations need to take steps beyond preventing threats such as ransomware from impacting their cyber infrastructure – they must also be able to respond to and recover when incidents occur.
• It is essential to protect, backup and restore not only the business data, but also the data which defines today’s virtual and cloud IT infrastructure, and applications.
• The cloud backup market is critical due to this dependence on digital services and meeting regulations like the EU's NIS2 and the Digital Operational Resilience for the Financial Sector Regulation.
• The cloud backup market was valued at $5.75 billion in 2023 with a growth rate of 18.7%.
• The market includes traditional enterprise solutions, born-on-the-cloud vendors, and services, covering on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
• There are many excellent solutions, and it is important to look in depth at their capabilities to decide which is best for your organization’s needs. The Product/Vendor Evaluations provide this information.
• While many solutions protect data held in common Software as a Service (SaaS) like Microsoft 365, as more industry specific applications are delivered in this way, solutions must expand to cover these.
• There are few solutions on the market that provide backup protection for cloud data lakes. This could be a challenge if these become a focus of cyber-attacks.
• AI and ML technologies are becoming an essential enabler of cyber resilience by automating threat detection, optimizing backup processes, finding, and classifying sensitive data, as well as supporting disaster recovery processes.
• Most vendors now include some level of AI / ML support, but this is to detect malware and abnormal activities.
• AI has the potential to help with more complex tasks including protecting data according to its classification well as to assist in the data restoration and service recovery processes.
• In the longer term, an organization should only need to give an AI based backup and disaster recovery solution a set of resilience objectives, compliance requirements and cost constraints for the system to build, evaluate, and implement the technology elements and support the manual processes needed to meet these.