7 Steps To Backup As A Service Heaven

Backup. Let's face it… it's never been the sexiest subject in tech. But what it lacks in glamour, it makes up for in necessity. Backup is the insurance policy that everyone needs, yet no one enjoys the ever-increasing complexity and premiums. For an Enterprise, backup often means a mesh of point solutions, spiralling data growth and a constant flow of CapEx costs and operational pain. That's why managing data growth and improving data backup and DR are both in the top 7 IT investments for 2016, and APAC has the fastest growing Data Protection as a Service market.

Fortunately help is on hand. Savvy service providers are increasingly looking to take that pain away by offering Backup as a Service. The offerings delivered by service providers are necessary for many customers to realise the benefits of cloud while reducing risk associated with compliance, security, availability and data management.

But spare a thought for these noble providers of infrastructure and management; if backup is such a problem for the Enterprise; it's not going to be easy for a service provider either. It takes careful planning and precise execution to launch an offering that pleases the masses, lowers their costs and still turns a profit.

This post pulls experience from a wealth of colleagues and customers to help ensure you offer a successful and profitable Backup as a Service offering by following these 7 simple steps:

1. Know your customer…really well
Sounds obvious, right? Yet one of the most common sins in service development is not targeting a defined market and customer use cases. Speak to any CIO, CFO or CISO about their challenges with data protection and you'll get a myriad of grumbles - this is a great place to start. How can backup services help you gain new customers you may not have today, possibly in new industries? And finally, you can't be all things to all people. So, define how Backup as a Service (BaaS) will help offer customers a differentiated experience against your competition.

2. Build the Business Case
If it's worth doing, it's worth investing. Building a backup service will involve investment in time, effort and money. Internally, you'll need to engage senior management, finance, sales, operations and support. Externally you'll partner with vendors, requiring them to invest too. We often avoid setting too high expectations for fear of underachieving, but to get the best out of your vendor partnerships you'll need to dust off the crystal ball and forecast what success looks like using sensible assumptions and customer demand. Ideally, using your data on customer consumption and new feature requests is a key here. If you do not have a business case that justifies the investment, my recommendation is to partner with an existing backup service provider and white label their services - it likely an easier route to market.

3. Start with the service catalogue, not technology
Strange advices are coming from a technology vendor? Usually we're all about the latest product features, speeds, feeds and capabilities. But an initial service catalogue often provides a simple offering at a compelling price point, and then upsell options based on enhanced SLA's, as well as value added features. E.g. Lower RTO/RPO for more critical workloads, greater management or security, longer retention, offsite copies etc. This will help ensure a broader market appeal, lower the risk of service commoditization and provide more flexibility than some competitors 'one-size-fits-all' offering.

4. Don't attempt everything at launch
Rome was not built in a day, nor shall your backup service. Even the most rapidly innovating of providers take time to mature a portfolio.

Start with the most common use case, get to market quick, and then use this revenue to build future service enhancements. Take a product like Commvault that can facilitate Backup, Archive, Disaster Recovery and Enterprise Search services - it's still best to ring-fence the initial launch to the most popular backup use cases and then build out the offerings in phased iterations.

5. Streamline costs through integration
Launched your Backup as a Service offering? Check. Growing nicely? Check. Noticing operational costs creeping up more than expected? Eek! Don't worry, this is one of the typical challenges a service provider faces and you've now reached a point where it's sensible to invest in initiatives to streamline operations. Backup vendors with a comprehensive and open API offering bespoke Personalisation Services are just what you need. You can now significantly reduce ongoing operational costs by; automating the tasks that are incurring a cost burden on your services business (measure, gain insight, improve).

6. Embrace public cloud
Turn these once feared enemies into partners, and focus on differentiating your services - especially the value-added management services they don't provide. Cloud storage services offer unparalleled durability, geo-redundancy and price per GB making them a compelling case for long term retention and tape replacement (just watch out for the RTO's and egress charges). Need an additional datacenter for an offsite backup copy that can be restored for DR? Use Public Cloud to keep up with the market and offer your customers greater choice.

7. Honor thy Partner
To successfully go on the journey of delivering any as a Service offering, you'll need trusted partners. The old way of partnering was to invite 3 vendors to pitch, run a PoC and then smash them all on price. But things have changed. If you seek utility pricing from your vendor it's now a shared risk model. Moving from an old vendor relationship to a trusting partnership should open more doors. Sharing IP, joint investment and go to market activities are some of the ways to accelerate monetization for mutual success.

Conclusion
These are just some, but not all of the steps service providers can take. Do you have backup pains you'd like a service provider to take away? Are you a Service Provider who needs help differentiating your portfolio with backup? Or perhaps you are a service provider who's cracked the code and made it to Backup as a Service heaven already. If so, please get in touch with the right backup solution provider right away.