As more frameworks enter the market under the label of “resilience,” it is important to distinguish between surface-level checklists and models that help organizations change. Most are narrow in scope, focused on isolated capabilities like cyber recovery or backup maturity. Others are built to reinforce a vendor’s product set. They may offer a quick assessment of one area but often fall short when it comes to driving sustained, meaningful improvement.
What’s missing is the way to connect technical execution with business outcomes.
The Veeam Data Resilience Maturity Model (DRMM) was created to fill that gap. It is a research-based, vendor-neutral framework designed to help organizations assess where they stand against industry peers, who’s adoption of mature practices have led to demonstrably better outcomes, with this knowledge organizations can align stakeholders across IT and business functions, and take practical steps to improve. Born out of the need for a better approach, the DRMM gives IT and security leaders a shared language to drive resilience as a strategic capability not just a technical task.
This shift in approach is already delivering measurable results. Organizations applying the same principles reflected in the DRMM have seen significant gains. One healthcare network reduced outage costs by $5 million per incident. A global bank eliminated cyber-related outages entirely after implementing a more integrated recovery strategy. On average, every dollar invested in resilience returns between $3 and $10 in value — through reduced downtime, faster recovery, and greater operational agility.
A Model Built with Experts, Grounded in Real-World Insight
The Veeam Data Resilience Maturity Model was co-developed with McKinsey and industry experts from MIT, Palo Alto Networks, and Microsoft. It is informed by input from 500 senior IT, security, and operations leaders, as well as Insights on leading resilience practices from 50 one-on-one interviews with industry experts.
The model reflects both where the market is going and how organizations are managing resilience today. It bridges the gap between theory and execution. The result is a framework that not only sets a clear standard but is also grounded in the realities of day-to-day IT, security, and operations work. This combination of expert insight and peer benchmarking makes the DRMM an effective tool for aligning strategy, surfacing gaps, and prioritizing investments that strengthen resilience.
Veeam DRMM A Collaborative Effort Backed by Industry and Field Experience
A Unified View of Strategy, People, Process, and Technology Sets DRMM Apart
What makes this model different is its depth. While other frameworks may stop at tool coverage or cyber-specific metrics, the Veeam DRMM evaluates maturity across strategy, people, processes, and six core technology domains: backup, recovery, architecture and portability, security, reporting, and intelligence. This structure gives organizations a complete view of their data resilience posture and where to focus next. It also provides business outcome metrics that can be used to build stakeholder support. That broader lens matters. Resilience gaps often stem from deeper operational issues, not just technical limitations. It’s why aligning across teams and understanding what’s behind repeated outages or slow recovery times is so critical.
As emphasized in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Is Your Company One Outage Away From Chaos? Dr. George Westerman, Principal Research Scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management, writes:
“Outages aren’t just technical failures. They’re signals of deeper issues in how technology is managed and integrated across the business.”
This is the kind of visibility leaders need. At the early stages, backup and recovery are essential, but they are just the starting point. As organizations scale, operate across hybrid environments, and take on more complexity, they need to strengthen all areas of resilience. That includes architecture, security, reporting, intelligence, and the processes that connect them. This strengthening must be aligned to business priorities and expectations to ensure resilience efforts support the outcomes that matter most.
The DRMM helps organizations see where they are doing well and where they are falling behind. It also shows how they compare to peers and how their performance shifts across the eight dimensions as they move from basic to advanced maturity. This makes it easier to set priorities, focus resources, and justify future investments based on clear business impact.
Sample Adoption Levels by Horizon
A set of distinct capabilities are seen as table-stakes in lower horizons, with incremental practices being common as respondents move up.
A Vendor-Neutral Model That Works in Any Environment
The Veeam DRMM is designed to help organizations advance regardless of the tools they use. It connects assessment with action to drive meaningful change. This neutrality makes it especially valuable for large enterprises working across hybrid environments, legacy systems, and multi-vendor stacks.
The model was shaped by input from a wide mix of industries and roles. It captures the realities facing CIOs, CISOs, IT operations, and compliance leaders, each with their own priorities and challenges. By taking all of these perspectives into account, the DRMM helps teams build a shared understanding of their current state and align on where to go next.
The result is a practical framework that applies broadly without forcing fit. It helps organizations assess resilience on their terms, using a structure that’s grounded in how they actually operate.
DRMM Baselining Comes from 500+ Respondents Across a Mix of Backgrounds
Built-in Industry Benchmarking Highlights Gaps and Opportunities
Every industry has different starting points when it comes to resilience. The Veeam DRMM accounts for this variability, providing a consistent structure while allowing organizations to benchmark against peers in their industry. Whether the priority is regulatory readiness, operational uptime, or cyber recovery, the model helps identify meaningful next steps. This is critical for setting priorities, justifying investment, and identifying where gaps are most likely to impact business performance.
Looking at the baseline data from the initial DRMM research we see significant differences across industries. Sectors like Financial Services, Insurance, and Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) often score higher due to regulatory pressure and stronger investment. Others, such as Public Sector and Consumer, show consistent gaps in key areas like automation, recovery testing, and cross-functional planning.
DRMM Benchmarking by Select Industries
The Veeam DRMM Delivers a Measured and Incremental Path Forward
We consistently see that organizations rarely operate at the same level of maturity across every area of data resilience. Some may have strong backup capabilities but lack automation in recovery or visibility in reporting. The Veeam Data Resilience Maturity Model (DRMM) is designed with that reality in mind.
By assessing maturity across eight dimensions, the DRMM helps organizations identify where they stand today and what actions will have the greatest impact. The goal is not to achieve perfection in every category, but to prioritize the areas that offer the biggest risk reduction or operational gain. It also considers varying levels of complexity, budget, and resource constraints guiding teams toward the most practical next steps.
The result is a clear, tailored roadmap that shows strengths, surfaces gaps, and outlines how to move from one horizon to the next with prescriptive guidance by domain.
Veeam DRMM Sample Actions to Advance Across Maturity Horizons
Take the Next Step
We created the DRMM out of a growing need to help organizations connect technical execution with business risk. It is a research-backed framework designed to help leaders set priorities, justify investments, and close the gap between perceived and actual readiness.
At VeeamON, SiliconANGLE captured this shift in urgency:
“CIOs and CISOs see the DRMM as a way to close the gap between boardroom conversations and what’s happening on the ground. One CISO shared that she had pushed for budget to improve ransomware readiness but was repeatedly denied — until her organization was hit. She said if she had access to a model like the DRMM earlier, she could have more effectively quantified the risk and secured support before the damage was done.”
This is the kind of alignment the industry needs. The Veeam DRMM helps organizations bring clarity to resilience, turning risk into action and strategy into outcomes.
Explore the full DRMM eBook to see how the model works and why it’s becoming the new standard.
The post Not All Data Resilience Frameworks Are Equal: Why the Veeam Data Resilience Maturity Model (DRMM) Sets the Industry Standard appeared first on Veeam Software Official Blog.
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