The difference between user demand and what information technology can deliver in the enterprise is holding back innovation, based on a 2017 study commissioned by Veeam Software Inc. and produced by the Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. The results, drawn from a survey of more than 1,000 IT decision makers, showed that two-thirds of enterprises are being stymied by unplanned downtime.

“If the business expects no more than 30 minutes of downtime and your failover window is more than two hours, you have an availability gap,” said Jason Buffington (pictured), data protection analyst at ESG. “If the business says it cannot tolerate more than an hour of data loss, but you only backup once per night, then you have a protection gap.”

Buffington described the availability gap research during a visit to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and answered questions from co-hosts Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu) during this year’s VeeamOn event in New Orleans, Louisiana. They discussed the study’s findings, the evolution of multi-cloud hybrid architecture and Veeam’s role in meeting backup demands. (* Disclosure below.)

The ESG study showed that 82 percent of enterprises are facing an availability gap, at nearly $22 million per year in cost due to unplanned downtime. Buffington attributed the gap to lack of a proactive strategy on the part of many businesses to anticipate platform shifts.

“Every time that you modernize production, it forces a modernization of protection,” Buffington said. “If you underestimate the importance of that, you get these gaps.”

The end state will be hybrid

The analyst said that as enterprise IT platforms shift to the cloud, businesses should prepare for the world of multi-cloud hybrid architecture.

“Cloud is not necessarily the end state; the end state is hybrid,” Buffington stated. “We shouldn’t be talking about migration; we should be talking about agility.”

As businesses realize the need to integrate snapshots and use replication to minimize the data loss window, Veeam appears to be taking full advantage by supplying technology to meet demand, according to Buffington.

“You can’t recover fast enough if the only thing you’re going to do is restore from backup,” he said. “That’s how you meet the rest of the story that backup alone can’t do, and kudos to Veeam for doing it.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VeeamOn 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VeeamOn 2017. Neither Veeam Software Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE