The data protection industry has seen many trends in 2014, from the adoption of cloud backup to disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). As virtual and cloud offerings have become a standard in backup and disaster recovery, an influx of users leveraging these solutions has once again landed a recurring trend on the 2015 list.

No. 1 Trend for 2015: Customers will rebel against poor customer support.

Many technology companies still do not understand the importance of customer service. No matter how effective a solution may be, the people behind the products are a company's most powerful asset. So why do companies continue to outsource technical support to overseas call centers?

Customer support can be a large competitive differentiator in a crowded market space. Companies that understand this and make service the foundation upon which everything else is built will set themselves apart from the competition. Customers should not only be happy when the installation is easy and the backups are reliable – it is even more imperative that the customer remains satisfied when things go wrong.

Companies like Symantec continue to use overseas support in order to satisfy its bottom line and shareholders. Meanwhile the business owners suffer from long hold times, lack of product knowledge from the support group, and multiple contacts to achieve problem resolution. When this occurs with backup and disaster recovery, every minute of system downtime means money lost. For small businesses the loss of funds and productivity can be devastating. UltraBac Software's #1 goal has always been customer satisfaction, which is why its support team has always been located at its U.S. based headquarters.

All calls that are made to UltraBac Software are answered by a live U.S. representative. When a customer needs something the last thing a person wants to do is sit through an automated phone system to try to determine the best person to speak with. With this structure in place, UltraBac Software has set the industry standard for technical support with average hold times of less than five minutes.

When UltraBac Software customers need technical assistance, they work with English speaking support engineers who not only have up-to-date working knowledge of the products, but network and industry knowledge as a whole. For more complex issues, there are clear tiered support paths where fixes are escalated to developers immediately, and whereby developers of UltraBac products can be consulted to get the answers customers need when customers need them. UltraBac Software products also come with a one year maintenance subscription that provides free technical support and product upgrades.

UltraBac Software is also on trend for 2014 with the upcoming release of both disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) and cloud backup.