Business Continuity At Risk Due to Inadequate Investment in Data Protection
SINGAPORE, 31st May 2012 - Despite 2011 experiencing record levels of environmental, economic and political upheaval, the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery (DR) Index 2012 findings from the industrial sector, namely construction and manufacturing, reveal that only 53% of respondents were confident they could recover quickly in the event of a disaster.
The global downturn is forcing manufacturers to focus on cost-reduction and to do more with less resources. This could explain why nearly half (45%) of those surveyed cited lack of budget and IT resources as the key challenges. And one in ten (11%) said they spend nothing on backup and DR, and a quarter (25%) state they don't have the support of their senior business executives. In an a highly competitive sector where the tolerance for any downtime is almost zero, its concerning that only 45% say they would not suffer substantial downtime in the event of a serious incident or natural disaster.
New technologies such as virtualization and the use of cloud services, which should bring efficiencies to an organization, are also bringing new challenges to IT departments. The vast majority (67%) of industrial firm IT managers surveyed believe their greatest challenge in a hybrid environment is moving data between physical, virtual and cloud environments. One in four (26%) have virtualised 50% or more of their production servers and this figure is set to grow by 30% in the next 12 months. Despite this growth, many are putting their data at risk, with nearly 40% confirming they only back up virtual servers at monthly or irregular intervals.
Security and availability concerns had previously slowed the adoption of cloud for disaster recovery. However, the industry is now shifting with 94% predicting they will be using the cloud in some form in the next 12 months. 53% recognize the operational cost reductions that can be achieved but most are not embracing the cloud for their backup strategy. Nearly a third (29%) stated they have no offsite backup strategy at all.
Due to this inconsistent approach, many organizations are struggling to manage their data in hybrid physical, virtual and cloud environments. Many still use multiple, disparate tools which are likely to be spread across multiple sites, with just over a third (36%) managing three or more different solutions to protect their critical data. They may also be employed for diverse tasks, such as data backup, system imaging, patching, migrations and testing, which can lead to mistakes and inefficiencies.
Commenting on the findings, Bill Taylor-Mountford, APAC President, Acronis said: "The pressures on the industrial sector are escalating. It has a reputation for quality management, optimisation and automation, yet it's clear that their backup and DR strategies are not keeping up with the rising adoption of virtualisation. With speed being a key competitive differentiation and increasing productivity being number one priority, there is an increased intolerance for any downtime. Organisations in the industrial sector need to embrace new technology to help them consolidate and standardize their backup and DR plan. In doing so, confidence levels will rise and IT managers' roles will become easier."
Notes to the editor:
The survey was conducted by the Ponemon Institute across 18 countries in September and October 2011. Over 6,000 IT practitioners were surveyed iin organisations with no more than 1,000 seats (no more than 500 seats in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong). Details of how the index was calculated and where each country appears can be found here:
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About Acronis:
Acronis is a global cyber protection company that provides natively integrated cybersecurity, data protection, and endpoint management for managed service providers (MSPs), small and medium businesses (SMBs), and enterprise IT departments. Acronis solutions are highly efficient and designed to identify, prevent, detect, respond, remediate, and recover from modern cyberthreats with minimal downtime, ensuring data integrity and business continuity. Acronis offers the most comprehensive security solution on the market for MSPs with its unique ability to meet the needs of diverse and distributed IT environments.
A Swiss company founded in Singapore in 2003, Acronis has 15 offices worldwide and employees in 50+ countries. Acronis Cyber Protect is available in 26 languages in 150 countries and is used by over 20,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses. Learn more at www.acronis.com.