Insurance

Over time some companies that experience limited numbers of failures reduce the available budget for backups, considering them unnecessary. (Regardless of whether this is a literal reduction or simply a failure to grow the backup system to meet demands, the end result is the same.) Those same businesses, however, would never decide to cease taking regular insurance just because no claims had been lodged over a period of time.
There is no difference between backups and insurance. Similar to insurance policies, backup systems are an investment that would be preferable to avoid needing to collect on. For instance, most people who own a home carry some form of home and contents insurance policy from year to year. Every year they hope that they don’t have to make a claim, as making a claim invariably means that something bad has happened — something they’d rather have avoided. Not having needed to make a claim is hardly justification for not renewing the policy each year though. It is the same for backups
— a company should have backups running every day on systems, and every day where the backups aren’t required should be considered a good day, not one where money has been wasted.
Ultimately, backups become an accepted component in a company when management and users stop thinking of them as an end in themselves or a “bottomless pit” cost center, but instead consider them to be a form of insurance the company needs if it’s going to survive system failures.

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