Future-Proofing Multi-Cloud Environments with BaaS

Object First’s Anthony Cuismano offers commentary on future-proofing multi-cloud environments with BaaS (Backup as a Service). This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

Recently, the adoption of BaaS (Backup-as-a-Service) has been accelerated by the increasing deployment of dispersed multi-cloud environments.  BaaS brings a scalable, cost-effective solution for IT teams. BaaS also allows enterprises to focus on strategic IT initiatives while entrusting their backup processes to cloud-native services. As today’s threat landscape grows increasingly complex, businesses must prioritize solutions that ensure disaster recovery and business continuity.

As organizations navigate tight budgets and rapidly evolving IT environments, Backup as a Service (BaaS) is gaining traction; however, selecting the right backup provider can still be a complex task. Whether expanding existing backup capabilities or implementing a solution for the first time, understanding the use cases of both traditional backup and BaaS is key to making a confident, well-informed investment.

Cloud Environments are Expanding – BaaS Provides the Roadmap

In 2025, we are seeing the advancement of sophisticated cyber threats driven by emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, edge computing, and more. However, these technologies are also being utilized by business leaders to not only fortify their ecosystems and networks but also promote innovation for their employees and customers. This means that data management and security must also evolve as data becomes even more critical to the overall success of companies.

This is where the rapid growth of multi-cloud environments has played a revived role over the past couple of months. This technology provides greater flexibility and oversight of data stewardship on a granular level that requires an intimate level of security. The Pentagon, for example, recently announced a plan to scale enterprise cloud offerings. Their implementation plan includes scaling the Pentagon’s enterprise cloud environment and their multi-cloud contract. They are also kicking off efforts to provide cloud infrastructure overseas and at the tactical edge.

Through this transition, BaaS has become the leading solution in managing backup systems in dispersed cloud environments. BaaS has many key benefits and features for managing and securing data stored across multi-cloud platforms, such as scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. BaaS is a convenient, fully managed, automated solution that runs in the background and is a strategic investment for companies of any size.

The Benefits of BaaS

As mentioned above, BaaS provides many benefits for businesses looking to implement secure storage methods for their data stored on dispersed cloud environments. As organizations experience growth and evolve, BaaS can easily scale to meet the expanding needs of the business and be integrated into existing and additional platforms and applications. While still offering security and compliance, traditional backups may not offer as much ease and flexibility as an organization’s storage needs evolve. An enterprise that deploys traditional backups may have a bigger budget and more clarity when it comes to their future growth and scalability needs, unlike smaller organizations that need more room to expand their storage.

BaaS is a reliable tool that will continue running in the background (as a service) and can be accessed anywhere if an internet connection is established. BaaS is a fully automated process that requires extremely limited human oversight and minimizes the risk of human error. This also frees up IT teams to focus on other strategic initiatives and investments, reducing the need to focus on storage security. Maintenance and management of backups will fall on the provider as opposed to an in-house team that would be managing traditional backups.

BaaS is especially crucial in the current economic condition as IT budgets continue to get reduced or stay stagnant and fail to meet the needs of the IT teams as the organization grows. BaaS is cost-effective and affordable as it is typically billed on a subscription basis, ensuring a predictable spend and budget optimization. For example, storage vendors are offering pay-per-use consumption models that allow service providers to purchase and utilize BaaS without any major upfront investments. This allows them to easily scale both BaaS and DRaaS (Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service) offerings while maintaining the highest levels of security and compliance.

Another major benefit of BaaS is the ability to restore data that is stored on the cloud following a disaster. Disaster recovery is critical for organizations as they face many challenges due to ransomware, critical bugs, natural disasters, cyberattacks, hardware failure, and other disruptive and unexpected events.

BaaS Providers to Fit Business Outcomes

Business decision makers should consider several features when considering a BaaS provider, such as security, reliability, availability, and more. A leading BaaS vendor should offer encryption and credential management, as well as other security protocols such as private keys, support object locking for storage, and a logical “air gap.” These techniques will reduce the threat of ransomware attacks targeting backups and storage.

When selecting a vendor, it should be clear how they guarantee the reliability of backups. They should not be collocated with other services, as that could cause threats to data and backups. The transfer of data should be just as secure as when it is stored. Therefore, BaaS services should enable data to move between on-premises locations and public cloud environments easily.

Lastly, BaaS vendors should provide a service level agreement (SLA) for availability and time to access data in case of failure. IT teams should ensure the SLA meets their organization’s recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO).

Conclusion

As organizations continue to navigate an increasingly complex digital landscape, Backup-as-a-Service has emerged as a foundational technology for secure, scalable, and cost-effective data protection. In an era defined by exponential data growth, hybrid cloud environments, and evolving cyber threats, BaaS not only simplifies backup management but also strengthens disaster recovery readiness. By offloading routine backup tasks to trusted providers and leveraging robust security measures, IT teams can reallocate resources to innovation and strategic growth.

Ultimately, BaaS is more than a storage solution—it’s a critical enabler of resilience, agility, and business continuity in a cloud-first world.