A new survey by Forrester Research commissioned by IBM estimates that usage of automation in IT resilience processes will nearly double in the next two years. Hybrid multicloud adoption is also on an upward trajectory, with 70% of IT leaders expanding these capabilities.

The report delves into trends in automation for data protection and disaster recovery and identifies several key insights for hybrid multicloud resilience.

1. IT leaders value IT resilience

As businesses undergo technology transformation, they are migrating critical operations and customer-facing applications to hybrid multicloud platforms, looking to optimize productivity, recovery and backup, and customer experience.

While a third of IT decision-makers view automation as a major opportunity for cloud resilience, roughly the same amount don’t have the processes in place to achieve this. That’s where automation and workflow orchestration come in — they help IT teams prevent downtime and efficiently manage recovery across hybrid multicloud environments.

2. Unplanned downtime impacts business outcomes

Forty-six percent of survey respondents say their organizations experienced unplanned downtime in the last year. System failure of hardware or software is the most common cause, followed by data loss and corruption and human error. Cyber attacks and data breaches have the largest impact on business revenue and customer experience.

Only 47% of respondents indicate their organization is prepared to run an orchestrated backup and recovery process in their hybrid multicloud environment. Because talent in the areas of cybersecurity, cyber recovery and hybrid multicloud are often in short supply, many companies rely on managed cloud services and other third-party providers to run IT resilience processes.

Fortunately, automation helps prevent downtime. As a first step, organizations must improve visibility into their tech operations. To that end, more than 40% of survey participants indicate that optimizing cloud infrastructure operations is a priority for hybrid multicloud transformation in the next two years.¹

3. Complex environments require automation

Previously, recovery has relied largely on manual processes, but IT leaders expect to increase the use of automation to improve speed and accuracy. Relying on manual testing, monitoring and backup for hybrid multicloud environments can be expensive, and most companies do not have the staff to devote to these tasks.

By automating repetitive resiliency tasks as well as many backup and recovery operations, organizations can achieve better efficiency and reduce errors. They build customized, automated workflows and streamline migration to the cloud.

To address resource and automation gaps, 51% of IT leaders report that their companie use a combination of custom in-house and third-party resources to support resilience in hybrid multicloud environments.

Additional takeaways

Along with the flexibility and scalability that hybrid multicloud offers, automation is essential to manage recovery across the entire infrastructure. The study shares several best practices such as establishing an IT resilience plan that parallels your cloud transformation, including technology, staffing, and management method considerations.