How do you take 40 minutes of viewpoints from a panel of leading experts and condense it into a 5-minute read designed to provide you with actionable advice you can immediately use? That’s the challenge I posed to myself as I prepared to write this blog, so let me know if I delivered.
The panel: Nathan McAfee, Lead Economic Validation Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group; Jaimie Fox, Azure Technology Strategist at Microsoft; and Chris DiRado, Principal Technologist at Commvault.
Their goal: Unpack the key findings from this crucial research (Enterprise Strategy Group Economic Validation), providing a clear-eyed view of how organizations can prepare for, and recover from, the inevitable.
The High Stakes of Slow Recovery
A cyberattack’s impact isn’t just about the initial breach; it’s the prolonged downtime that cripples operations, erodes customer trust, and racks up exorbitant costs. As Nathan explained, the study aimed to quantify the real-world difference a modern, integrated recovery solution could make.
The findings highlight a stark contrast between traditional approaches and a prepared strategy. Without an effective plan, organizations face extended outages; significant data loss; long-lasting brand damage; and a painful, manual recovery process that can take weeks or even months.
The Solution: A Unified Defense with Commvault and Azure
The study focuses on the economic benefits of the joint solution from Commvault and Microsoft Azure. This isn’t just about backup; it’s about a holistic cyber resilience platform. Jaimie emphasized the power of the integration, which provides a secure, scalable, and intelligent foundation for data protection: “The power of the Commvault solution is in the simplicity and the thoroughness. How easy it is to do these recoveries … and in the automation of the rebuild process using Azure AI and on-demand Azure tenants.”
Breakthrough Findings: Customer Reported Results
The study provided hard numbers to back up the solution’s value. Organizations using the joint Commvault and Azure solution achieve:
- 99% faster recovery: The most dramatic finding: where organizations previously required 8.7 hours on average (with some taking 24 days for full recovery), the joint solution between Commvault and Azure enabled one customer recovery in under an hour. Nathan noted: “The 99% faster recovery – I could put decimals on that because we had so many stories of scenarios that took months to do, and now we did it in hours.”
- 30x more frequent testing: Organizations moved from annual tests of single systems requiring 40 FTE hours, to comprehensive monthly testing of entire ecosystems completed in 30 minutes. One customer shared: “It used to take 24 to 36 hours to recover a single server instance. We can now restore everything in less than an hour.”
- Zero reported non-recoverable events: Every customer interviewed reported zero non-recoverable events since implementing the solution. “Every person that I interviewed told me that since they’ve gone to this solution, they haven’t had a single non-recoverable event,” Nathan emphasized.
- 94% faster rebuild: The study documented 94% faster rebuild times through Cloud Rewind technology, enabling rapid restoration of entire application environments and infrastructure.
- Dramatic cost reduction: Average testing costs dropped from $141,864 annually to under $11,000, even while testing frequency increased to daily in some cases.
The Mindset Transformation: From Hope to Certainty
The most powerful insight from the research wasn’t about technology – it was about mindset. Nathan repeatedly emphasized organizations moving from hoping their recovery plans would work to knowing they will.
“We were comparing hope vs. certainty,” he explained. “Certainty is a word you hear me say a lot because that really came out in the customer stories.”
As one global infrastructure director put it: “I wake up every day, check my Cleanroom Recovery report about the previous night’s restore, and know we are protected and can recover. We have eliminated downtime by always being able to recover from cyber events.”
The certainty shines through in being able to test recoverability of more than just one component. Nathan shared, “I went into this thinking about data recovery without thinking about ecosystem recovery. They’re now testing the recoverability of their entire ecosystem.”
Study participants also discussed testing in true chaotic environments. “So much of testing is done in a very calm environment. While any type of true restore is done in a chaotic environment. I heard quite a few stories about how Commvault specifically helped simulate the chaotic environment. So, in the time when it did happen, it wasn’t the first time you went through a high stress recovery,” Nathan shared.
Bonus Insights: AI Acceleration Through Confidence
Nathan shared additional findings from the research that are not called out in the report, including how organizations feel confident to accelerate their AI initiatives because they know they’re protected.
“AI comes with rapid change,” he explained, adding that the customers he interviewed “called out the assurance that no matter what happens, I can get to my minimum viable company somewhat quickly. It gave organizations more confidence in going through the rapid change that AI is injecting into their company.”
This confidence proves critical as organizations grapple with AI governance challenges. Jaimie highlighted: “One of the biggest concerns that most of my customers have with implementing AI now is how are we going to keep it safe, from an ethical standpoint, as well as from outages and a business continuity standpoint. With Commvault integrated with the Microsoft solution, the most complex and extremely large AI workloads are resilient and recoverable. Customers now have the confidence that their data is protected and recoverable with the resilience they need.”
Begin Your Transformation Today
The transformation from hope to certainty in cyber recovery isn’t just possible – it’s happening right now. The only question is: When will your organization make the leap? Download the complete ESG Economic Validation report and watch the webinar, Cracking the Code: Recover 99% Faster from Cyber Attacks, to hear from our expert panel. Use these as your blueprint to begin your organization’s transformation.
