Does multi-cloud backup have a future, or is it hype?

Backup

The idea of backing up to both say, AWS and Azure, does follow the 3-2-1 backup rule; each vendor represents one of the two mediums required, as well as meeting the one copy off-site requirement. The ability to back up to multiple clouds also enables organizations that are operating in a multi-cloud mode to use a single backup vendor.

Recovery

There is a benefit for those organizations using a multi-cloud operational strategy to minimize egress fees on recovery by backing up and recovering within a given public cloud vendor. So, from this perspective, there is a tangible benefit to using multi-cloud backup.

Recoverability

This question should be asked: "Are you better able to recover because you use a multi-cloud backup strategy?" The answer for most organizations is no. Using a single-cloud strategy will give you just as much benefit, while going multi-cloud possibly overcomplicates both the backup and recovery strategies.

Availability

Even public cloud vendors have outages. Service-level agreements often provide little in the way of compensation, however. So, there can be some benefit to using more than one vendor here. However, given that the likelihood of a public cloud vendor ever going down exactly at the time you need to recover is so small, using multi-cloud backup to offset this potential issue is probably a bit of overkill.

With each of these perspectives in mind, what does the future hold for multi-cloud backup?

It feels like a niche play here -- some enterprise and midmarket organizations will require the ability to use multiple clouds as part of their backup and recovery strategy. But, for the vast majority of organizations, that's not a major concern.

While there's value in multi-cloud backup, I believe its future is going to strictly rely on organizational backup strategy rather than just the mere presence of multiple clouds alone. Time will tell, but for now, multi-cloud backup is an option and not a driver for backup and recovery.