The future of data protection: Top trends to look out for in 2022

In 2022, there will be a continued focus on democratising data in the cloud and the power dynamic between the public and private clouds is likely to somewhat balance out. Traditionally, investing in AI requires top technical skill, computing power, and a massive amount of capital

Over the next 12 months, additional supply chain compromises will likely come to light, major vulnerabilities will continue to emerge, and the Asia-Pacific will experience more cyber incidents due to the increase of sophistication of ransomware and malware attacks. Organisations will have to upgrade their data protection protocols and communicate with other industry-leaders to combat the spread of complex attackers

Shiva Pillay & Anthony Spiteri

During 2020 and 2021, there was a shift in focus to improving remote working capabilities, access to cloud infrastructure and securing data. Over the next year, however, I believe businesses will desire more control of their data, with a greater focus on the ability to facilitate portability and seamless response to the changing demands of the future.

Although hybrid and multi-cloud models are not new, the freedom they provide will make it even more of a reality moving forward. With 2022 only just around the corner and promising to enable the exponential growth in the data protection industry, you might be wondering what's next. To help plan in advance, here's a few top trends to look out for:

Data portability

In 2022, there will be a significant focus on the ability for users or owners of a given dataset to easily duplicate this information across different software applications, platforms, services, and storage environments. With the rise of working-from-home due to Covid-19, this concept has been somewhat suppressed. However, as employees return to office workspaces, data portability will again take centre stage. Reducing the friction of data movement and enabling cloud acceleration are among the top benefits. According to our 2021 data protections trends report, 36 per cent of executives believe the ability to move workloads from one cloud to another is the most important element to modern data protection. The goal is to allow any user to experience flawless services across cloud environments, and in turn help the data economy thrive. Veeam's vision of "your data, when you need it, where you need it" will be vital to ensure teams can access data anywhere, at any time.

Vendors must cater for new ways of consuming IT

As the importance of how and when we use and develop software continues to grow, so has the range of licensing models and avenues for ingesting content. To best accommodate for the shifting requirements from buyers and sellers, developers will continue to expand on the tradition single-user style and create more adaptable options. One of the licensing models on the rise, and one in which we expect to see grow in 2022, is usage-based licensing or consumption-based business models. Usage-based licensing can improve customer retention as they never feel that they are paying for obsolete products. 39 per cent of SaaS providers now offer usage-based pricing as compared to about 23 per cent in 2014 and this number will continue to rise as organisations turn their focus to flexibility and innovation. For businesses, this is an attractive way to scale up their technology without spending unnecessary money or accruing capital expenditures.

More sophisticated supply chain cyber-threats

Over the next 12 months, additional supply chain compromises will likely come to light, major vulnerabilities will continue to emerge, and the Asia-Pacific will experience more cyber incidents due to the increase of sophistication of ransomware and malware attacks. As the number and severity of data breaches continues to increase, many large institutions have initiated rigorous security measures to protect themselves directly. Due to this, hackers and cybercriminals have had to seek new ways to gain access through more advanced mechanisms. The threat from supply chain compromises remains high – it is difficult for both vendors and their customers to protect their networks against well-resourced and pioneering actors with the ability to compromise widely used software products. On the flip side, supply chain and ransomware threats drove a 60 per cent increase in global cyber intelligence sharing across the financial service industry alone, and this trend will continue. Organisations will have to upgrade their data protection protocols and communicate with other industry-leaders to combat the spread of complex attackers.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) takes centre stage

The global platform as a service market size was valued at $44 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $319 billion by 2030. The Asia Pacific is also expected to witness market growth of 18.3 per cent compounding annually until this time. Platform as service (PaaS) providers are leveraging technology to enhance their agility, capability, meet the changing demands for 24/7 availability, increase deployment speed, and reduce IT costs. In 2022 industries such as healthcare, will require a safer more scalable infrastructure through Platform as a Service (PaaS) services in order to handle the appropriate information with superior speed and flexibility. It is expected that many businesses will outsource applications and data protection services to third-parties such as Veeam to establish more comprehensive cross-team collaboration and ensure all data is protected.

The evolution of Blockchain

As more companies begin to understand the true value of blockchain, we will start seeing substantial investments in blockchain technology and start to leverage decentralized Web3 applications throughout APAC. As trust around blockchain evolves over the next 12 months and beyond, the total value of deals across blockchain technology companies will increase significantly. In 2019, we saw investments in blockchain across the Asia-Pacific increase by 83.9 per cent, taking the total market value to $523.8m. Though decentralized data could pose some challenges by way of compliance and protection, the very natural of that means that it will further enable cross-border workforces and a growing tech savvy middle class that will continue to make APAC a hotbed for emerging technologies like blockchain and will provide a firm foundation for its uptake in 2022.

Democratisation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the cloud

In 2022, there will be a continued focus on democratising data in the cloud and the power dynamic between the public and private clouds is likely to somewhat balance out. Traditionally, investing in AI requires top technical skill, computing power, and a massive amount of capital. However, with AI offered via cloud services, companies are able to implement and benefit from the technology without making a large upfront investment. Cloud services are democratising AI, making it accessible to organisations who struggle with the high barrier to entry. The combination of AI and cloud services will provide a cost-effective solution to the expensive on-site hardware and is a reliable alternative to traditional setups. AI will help the cloud to manage data, as well as provide real-time insights into information across the entire ecosystem.

Kubernetes will help grow edge computing

Half of all enterprise-generated data will be created and processed beyond centralised cloud data centres via edge computing over the next year. Kubernetes allows organisations to efficiently run containers at the edge in a way that enables development teams to move with greater agility and speed by maximising resources. Ultimately, cloud and edge will work alongside one another, with workloads and applications at the edge being those that have low latency, high bandwidth, and strict privacy requirements. As the flow of data between cloud and edge devices expands, Kubernetes will offer this shared paradigm, allowing internal policies to be projected across the geographical time and space. In 2022, Kubernetes will become the computing standard from data centre and public cloud, all the way to the edge.

(The authors are Senior Vice President Asia Pacific & Japan and Senior Global Technologist, Product Strategy, Veeam Software respectively)