As information continues to multiply at astounding rates within organizations, the task of governing and protecting that data is becoming a massive challenge for internal IT departments, which are now turning to managed service providers (MSPs) for help.

In terms of the number of customers that are using or requesting data protection/backup services, there is clearly a growing demand from SMB and enterprise customers, based on recent analysis.

“Specifically, we are seeing a lot of providers and channel partners out there who are looking to position online cloud-based backup for their customer base. It’s the evolution of where we’ve come from and there are so many operational benefits and there is a real demonstrable for ROI from every customer,” according to Stephen Spellicy, director of enterprise data for Autonomy (News - Alert), an HP company.

Customers are choosing cloud back-up for a variety of reasons: to improve their operations, lower their costs and move away from legacy technologies that may have let them down in the past.

“Customers big and small are always looking for economies of scale and how to improve their operations and make those SLAs that their business holds them to,” Spellicy said.

Indeed, the online backup and recovery market is a crowded one and MSPs need a unique offering to differentiate their companies’ services.

There is a growing amount of information inside a typical IT environment; roughly 85 percent of the data being managed today is unstructured data, growing at the startling rate of 62 percent year over year, according to Spellicy.

Given that most companies are missing a so-called information governance strategy – which refers to the way in which IT controls its business information – MSPs have a real business opportunity today as the traditional needs of IT change.

“We tend to agree, it’s been IT’s job to ultimately store and protect company data within the four walls of the organization,” Spellicy said, pointing out, “The rules are changing.”

“New technologies and new ways of conduction business – things like social media – or a focus on mobility – is affecting the growth of this type of content – unstructured data – like never before,” Spellicy said. “Businesses are pushing back and looking for more agility in their IT operations and many see cloud services as means of achieving that type of IT agility and realizing new economies of scales from an operational perspective.”

For many CIOs, cloud is a key initiative in their business plans for 2012 and beyond, and for many, data protection is considered among their top five of key areas of improvement.

A move to cloud for them means they can lower their CAPEX while lowering their OPEX (News - Alert) to streamline their operations, so they lower their overhead and improve the quality of service to their internal customers.

“For many companies, mobility has emerged as a key business enabler – over 80 percent of the Fortune 100 is deploying or piloting tablets with sales expected to increase by 123 percent by 2014,” Spellicy said.

In fact, most key employees of these organization have already been using smartphones and other mobile devices for years.

“As a result of this disruptive change in the way we access and create information in the wild, new issues have related to how we handle the data protection and security – laptops, smartphone, tablets – they are all susceptible to threats such as data loss, viruses and even hacking,” he said. “With the advent of cloud-based data protection management, IT can reduce the management burden while they provide the highest levels of data protection possible.”

For more on growing your bottom line with cloud-based data protection, check outthis webinarhosted by the MSPAlliance and Autonomy.

Want to learn more about Managed Service Providers? Then be sure to attend MSPWorld, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO East 2012 taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. Since its inception, MSPWorld has been the only event with a single, vendor-agnostic focus of supporting Managed Service providers and their respective ecosystems. MSPWorld in Miami will delve into the most pressing channel and end-user issues that MSPs and their customers confront every day. For more information on registering for MSPWorld click here.