Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Cost Efficiency and Key Takeaways

I hope you’ve been following this blog series on key issues to consider when developing your data protection strategy for a multi-cloud environment.

In this blog post, I’ll discuss the all-important topic of cost and wrap up the series with some key takeaways.

Number nine: Cost Efficiency

I don’t have to tell you that cost is a huge concern of IT organizations these days.

So assessing the cost efficiency of a BaaS solution is a critical step.

This is especially important in multi-cloud environments. Clouds offer tremendous flexibility but if they are not managed properly, they can become extremely costly, wreaking havoc on your budget. So what should you be looking at when evaluating a BaaS solution?

First, make sure pricing for the solution scales with usage, so you only pay for what you actually need. “One size fits all” pricing models can end up charging you more than the value you are receiving.

Second, a BaaS solution should “understand” the cloud. By that, I mean it is designed to take advantage of the unique characteristics of clouds. Public clouds have different regions and zones—move a workload from one region or zone to another and you may get hit with an egress charge. Look for a BaaS solution that is smart enough to recognize the various topologies and characteristics, so it can help optimize your backup strategy while minimizing your costs.

Another aspect of this intelligence is ensuring your BaaS solution is able to leverage available cloud storage economics. Cloud vendors offer a wide range of storage options to meet a variety of needs. Traditional backup software made for on-prem views all storage assets as equal, but this is not the case in the cloud. Your BaaS solution should be smart enough to use the right kind of storage in the right way.

These capabilities are often overlooked when evaluating backup and recovery solutions, yet they are crucial for providing the optimal data protection at the best possible cost.

Some Final Takeaways

Managing data protection in a multi-cloud environment is distinctly different than in a traditional, on-prem data center model.

Throughout this series of blog posts, I have tried to zero in on the best practices that can help ensure the most effective data protection, with the least risk of surprises.

First, consider choosing backup as a service (BaaS) over manual deployment. BaaS offers you the flexibility and agility that sent you to the cloud in the first place.

Make sure the solution supports all elements within your infrastructure, residing on both on-prem “clouds” and public clouds. That includes VMs, applications, buckets, containers, and Kubernetes. That way, you will be ready to accommodate any and all backup scenarios that the business may require.

Make sure the solution offers elastic scaling. I can’t tell you how many times we have worked with organizations that start small—say, 100 VMs—but within a year, they are at 10,000 VMs due to organizational growth and so on. Your BaaS solution must offer the elastic scalability to keep pace with that kind of growth.

It’s also a smart idea to make sure your BaaS solution doesn’t just offer backup and recovery, but also simplifies data migration, disaster recovery, cloning, and other advanced capabilities. Having fewer solutions that do more helps simplify your life.

Finally, as discussed earlier in this post, look for an intelligent solution that knows how to use the cloud cost-effectively.

I hope you found this series helpful. If you’d like more information about how HYCU handles multi-cloud data protection, you can find more information at www.hycu.com. Or, you can experience HYCU first hand by signing up for a free trial at TryHYCU.

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Read on to find more ways to get BaaS right:

1. ‍Multi-cloud Backup and Recovery: Nine Ways to Get it Right‍
2. Get BaaS Right: Automating Protection, Leave No App Behind Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Automating Protection, Leave No App Behind‍
3. Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Recoverability and Cloning‍
4. Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Data Migration, DR and Scaling‍
5. 9 Ways to Get BaaS Right: Cost Efficiency and Key Takeaways Nine Ways to Get BaaS Right: Cost Efficiency and Key Takeaways