I’ve spent the last few months knee-deep in the findings from our 2027 State of IT Infrastructure Resilience study, drawing on them to write our just-released eBook. It explores how converging cost pressures, platform changes, artificial intelligence, and cyber threats are reshaping IT priorities.
IT teams are being asked to handle a lot at once: rising costs, platform decisions, AI plans, and the need to keep critical services protected and recoverable. These pressures don’t happen in isolation. A decision in one area can change the options in another.
That’s what we call The Great Infrastructure Reset. As I worked through the survey responses, one thing became even more apparent than it has been in the past: resilience is about more than backup or disaster recovery. It means being ready for disruption, adapting when plans change, and restoring the critical services your business depends on.
Costs and security are connected.
Infrastructure costs are rising for most organizations in the study: 90 percent of respondents said their data center infrastructure costs increased over the previous 12 months. And as teams plan for 2027, 46 percent said server and hardware costs are a major factor or primary driver in their infrastructure strategy. Cyberattacks on production platforms ranked as the top data center strategy concern, cited by 43 percent.
These pressures don’t arrive one at a time. A platform decision can affect licensing, staffing, security, integration, and recovery. Looking at each issue in isolation can make it harder to spot the dependencies—and the recovery gaps—that may come with a change.
Complexity is getting in the way of resilience.
The survey found that complexity is a major challenge for teams managing multiple hypervisors or hybrid cloud environments. Forty-seven percent cited operational complexity, 44 percent cited skills gaps, and 40 percent cited inconsistent data protection across platforms. Separately, 56 percent said planning for cyber incident recovery is their biggest challenge.
The number of tools involved is part of the picture: 87 percent of respondents use at least two backup products across their production platforms. The question isn’t just whether each tool works. It’s whether your platforms, people, and recovery processes work well together when you need them to.
AI interest is ahead of readiness.
AI is already on many IT and security road maps. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they’re actively investing in AI-enhanced IT or security tools, while another 32 percent are evaluating AI tools without committed budget. But only 19 percent said AI-enhanced backup or disaster recovery (DR) capabilities are operational today.
At the same time, 78 percent are at least somewhat concerned that AI-accelerated malware or ransomware could make attacks more sophisticated or frequent. That makes it worth asking two questions: Where can AI help your team, and are your infrastructure and recovery plans ready for the risks that come with it?
Recovery needs to go beyond backup.
Backups matter. When systems or data were brought down, 81 percent of affected respondents said they restored them from backup. But recovery also depends on things like identity, clean recovery environments, failover decisions, monitoring, and regular testing.
The business stakes can be high. Of the respondents who estimated the cost of downtime, 43 percent put the cost of one hour between $251,000 and $1 million. Knowing what downtime could mean for your business can help you prioritize which services to recover first and where to focus resilience investments.
Put the findings to work.
As you plan for 2027, consider:
- Where could infrastructure or platform changes create new security or recovery dependencies?
- Have you tested recovery across the full IT environment—not just backup or DR systems?
- Which services would have the greatest business impact if recovery took longer than expected?
- Are your AI plans supported by the infrastructure, security, and recovery processes they’ll need?
The organizations best prepared for disruption won’t necessarily be the ones with the most tools. They’ll be the ones that can bring people, platforms, and processes together—and recover cleanly when it matters.
Explore the 2027 findings.
Download the 2027 State of IT Infrastructure Resilience eBook to explore the five findings, see how the research was conducted, and bring new questions to your infrastructure and resilience planning.
The survey was conducted in 2026 with 734 IT leaders at organizations with 250 to more than 5,000 employees across seven countries in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. 11:11 Systems partnered with Veeam and commissioned independent analyst firm Data Protection Matters to conduct the study.
