The modern workplace has undergone a seismic transformation over recent years, with hybrid work becoming the norm and businesses rapidly adopting cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to facilitate it. SaaS applications like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have now become the backbone of business operations, enabling seamless collaboration and productivity. However, this dependence on SaaS solutions has also attracted a surge in cyberthreats, exposing critical business data to risks like ransomware and phishing attacks.
Amid these challenges, the 2025 State of SaaS Backup and Recovery Report offers a timely analysis of the SaaS data protection landscape. By surveying over 3,700 IT professionals from diverse industries and company sizes, this report highlights trends, challenges and solutions shaping the future of SaaS data resilience. For organizations seeking clarity in navigating these turbulent waters, the findings provide invaluable guidance.
Key revelations from the report are both eye-opening and concerning. For instance, 87% of IT professionals reported experiencing SaaS data loss in 2024, with malicious deletions as the leading cause. Moreover, while 61% of applications and workloads are expected to run on public cloud platforms in the next two years, only 14% of IT leaders feel confident they can recover critical SaaS data within minutes following an incident. These findings underscore an urgent call to action for businesses to strengthen their data resilience strategies.
In this blog, we’ll uncover the survey’s key findings, revealing how organizations are adapting to meet the ongoing challenges. From revealing the biggest threats to understanding the strategies IT leaders are leveraging to stay ahead, you’ll gain a clear picture of the trends shaping SaaS data protection.
The shift toward cloud: Major trends reshaping modern IT operations
Organizations worldwide are increasingly relying on hybrid cloud environments, with 54% of workloads and applications already cloud-hosted. This trend shows no signs of slowing down, as businesses anticipate growing this figure to 61% by 2026. The acceleration of cloud adoption reflects the critical role cloud solutions play in driving digital transformation and enabling organizations to scale effectively.
What’s driving cloud adoption?
The benefits propelling rapid cloud migration are clear: leveraging cloud platforms allows organizations to enhance operational efficiency, optimize strategic analytics and support real-time decision-making. However, this enthusiasm comes with a caveat — companies are carefully navigating concerns about data sensitivity, security and compliance as they transition.
Data types moving to the cloud
Certain types of data dominate cloud migration trends, illustrating where organizations feel confident leveraging the cloud’s potential. The top candidates for data migration to the cloud include:
- Non-sensitive analytics data (39%): Leading the pack, these datasets highlight the cloud’s role in powering strategic insights.
- The Internet of Things (IoT) and edge data (34%): The inclusion of high-velocity datasets reflects growing trust in the cloud’s ability to handle real-time analytics at scale.
- Sales and orders data (34%): Organizations are increasingly turning to cloud-hosted solutions to drive operational efficiency in sales processes.
Data that’s staying on-premises
Despite the allure of the cloud, businesses are cautious about entrusting their most sensitive information to third-party environments. The top candidates for data to remain on-premises include:
- Personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) (42%): Strict regulations and concerns about breaches keep this data largely on-premises.
- Corporate financial data (42%): Companies remain wary of potential risks in the cloud for critical financial records.
- Sensitive intellectual property (40%): Maintaining tight control over proprietary assets remains a top priority.
Top use cases for public cloud adoption
Cloud adoption is driven by practical needs that align with modern business challenges:
- Collaboration (39%): The flexibility and scalability of cloud solutions are essential for supporting hybrid and remote work environments.
- Disaster recovery (37%): Ensuring fast recovery and protecting data from loss or downtime remain critical priorities.
- Data warehousing and Database-as-a-Service (32%): Organizations value the cloud’s ability to manage large datasets and enable seamless data-driven operations.
SaaS application trends in 2024
The adoption of SaaS applications continues to transform how businesses collaborate, manage operations and scale their services. Collaboration platforms remain at the forefront of SaaS adoption, reflecting their critical role in today’s hybrid and remote work environments.
Microsoft 365 retains leadership while Google Workspace gains momentum
Microsoft 365 maintains its position as the leader in SaaS collaboration solutions, with a 53% adoption rate among survey respondents. However, this represents a decline from its 71% adoption rate in 2022, indicating a potential shift in preferences or increasing competition in the SaaS space.
Meanwhile, Google Workspace has seen a consistent rise in adoption, climbing to 35% in 2024 compared to 25% in 2022. This growth is particularly pronounced among SMBs, with 38% adoption compared to 32% among enterprises.
Diverging SaaS adoption trends between SMBs and enterprises
The survey also highlighted distinct preferences between SMBs and enterprise organizations when it comes to SaaS tools:
- SMBs favor applications that simplify everyday operations and finance management, such as:
- Google Workspace: 38% of SMBs vs. 32% of enterprises.
- Dropbox: 26% of SMBs vs. 20% of enterprises.
- Intuit QuickBooks: 20% of SMBs vs. 17% of enterprises.
- Enterprises lean towards tools that support large-scale operations and customer engagement, such as:
- Microsoft Dynamics: 32% of enterprises vs. 28% of SMBs.
- Salesforce: 28% of enterprises vs. 22% of SMBs.
- HubSpot: 24% of enterprises vs. 20% of SMBs.
What are the major barriers to cloud adoption?
Despite the widespread adoption of cloud solutions, many organizations face significant hurdles in migrating workloads and data to the cloud.
- Cloud cost optimization (24%): Managing expenses during and after migration remains the top concern for organizations.
- Compatibility and performance issues (20%): Ensuring workloads function seamlessly post-migration is another significant hurdle that causes delays and disruptions.
- Some organizations also face difficulties with provider selection and feasibility (15%), post-migration management (14%), right-sizing cloud instances (8%), licensing complexities (7%) and managing application dependencies (5%).
The gaps IT pros can’t ignore: Why confidence in recovery is low
Backup strategies are essential to securing critical SaaS data, yet IT professionals’ confidence in these systems remains alarmingly low.
Backup strategy adoption across SaaS platforms
Organizations leveraging SaaS applications report varying levels of backup strategy implementation:
- Microsoft 365: 70% have a backup strategy in place, the highest among SaaS platforms.
- Google Workspace: 66% of users report having a backup plan, reflecting strong adoption.
- Salesforce: Only 53% have a dedicated backup strategy, signaling a critical vulnerability.
Low confidence in backup system effectiveness
Despite the presence of backup strategies, only 40% of IT professionals expressed confidence in their systems’ ability to protect critical data during a crisis. This hesitancy is fueled by:
- Outdated backup solutions: Over 28% of respondents indicated their backup systems haven’t evolved in five years, leaving them ill-equipped to handle modern-day threats.
- Dissatisfaction with existing solutions: Nearly 30% of IT pros believe their backup and recovery tools fall short of what their organization needs.
- Fewer than 10% of respondents feel their organization’s approach to backup and disaster recovery is sufficient without requiring any changes.
What are the challenges in backup management?
Managing backups for SaaS applications presents unique challenges, varying by platform and user cohort. The survey reveals distinct pain points for users of Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce:
- Data recovery issues: Google Workspace (23%) and Salesforce (23%) users report the highest rates of difficulty with data recovery, compared to 20% of Microsoft 365 users.
- Alerting and reporting: Google Workspace users (11%) are most challenged in setting up and managing alerts, surpassing Microsoft 365 (8%) and Salesforce (8%) users.
- Compliance maintenance: Salesforce users (24%) struggle most with maintaining compliance, followed by Google Workspace (23%) and Microsoft 365 (21%).
The growing time burden of backup management
Backup management has become increasingly time-intensive for IT teams:
- Over 50% of respondents spend more than two hours daily — equating to over 10 hours per week — on monitoring, managing and troubleshooting backups.
- The cohort spending less than one hour daily has dropped sharply, from 39% in 2022 to 23% in 2024, while those dedicating three or more hours daily have grown from 5% in 2022 to 14% in 2024.
How organizations are securing backup infrastructure
The majority of organizations report having policies and controls in place to secure access to their backups across key areas, including public cloud (77%), servers or virtual machines (76%), SaaS applications (74%) and endpoints/PCs (73%).
While these numbers reflect a proactive approach, around 25% of organizations still lack policies and controls for backup security, presenting vulnerabilities in an increasingly hybrid and multicloud environment.
What are the major causes of SaaS data loss?
SaaS data loss remains a significant challenge, with only 13% of organizations reporting no data loss incidents in the past year. Key causes include:
- Malicious deletion: More than 50% of organizations suffered data loss from malicious deletion, 29% were impacted by external threats and 27% by insider actions.
- Accidental deletion: 34% of respondents experienced data loss due to human error.
- Misconfigurations: 30% of organizations faced data loss due to improper setup or maintenance.
- Integration issues: Conflicts with third-party applications affected 30% of respondents.
- Technical errors: 18% experienced scripting errors, while 14% faced sync issues.
The race to recovery: How quickly can organizations restore lost SaaS data?
The ability to swiftly recover lost SaaS data is critical for minimizing downtime and avoiding costly compliance breaches. Yet, recovery times vary widely:
- Only 14% of organizations surveyed can recover within minutes, ensuring minimal disruption.
- Just over 40% achieve recovery within hours, meeting operational and regulatory demands.
- About 35% require days or weeks, risking prolonged downtime and potential non-compliance.
- Alarmingly, 8% are unsure of recovery times, and 2% cannot recover lost data at all.
Recovery of SaaS data objects
The frequency of recovering SaaS data objects is as follows:
- Most frequently recovered:
- Email (20%) and mail contacts (17%) are restored daily, emphasizing their critical role in communication and business continuity.
- Least frequently recovered:
- Calendar objects (15%) and messaging app data (16%) see fewer recovery incidents, indicating lower frequency of loss or reduced immediate operational impact.
Key takeaways and recommendations from the 2025 State of SaaS Backup and Recovery Report
The 2025 State of SaaS Backup and Recovery Report paints a vivid picture of the evolving SaaS data protection landscape. Cloud adoption continues to surge among organizations, driven by the operational efficiency and scalability of SaaS platforms. Yet, alongside these advancements lie significant challenges. From tackling data threats to addressing the complexities of backup management, the findings highlight an urgent need for businesses to rethink and modernize their data protection strategies.
On that front, businesses must adopt a comprehensive, scalable backup strategy that aligns with the complexities of today’s hybrid and multicloud environments. Such a strategy should include robust data protection and rapid recovery capabilities to address SaaS data threats like accidental deletions and ransomware attacks. By investing in the right tools and practices, organizations can enhance their data resilience, minimize downtime and confidently meet the demands of an increasingly cloud-driven future.
For deeper insights into the SaaS world and actionable recommendations, download the full 2025 State of SaaS Backup and Recovery Report.