Three Quarters of European Businesses Might Not Recover from Disaster

EMC Corporation announced results of the EMC-sponsored European Disaster Recovery Survey 2011 which found that 74% of European companies are not very confident that they can fully recover systems or data and that more than half of all organisations (54%) lost data or suffered systems downtime in the last 12 months.

These findings highlight that companies need to focus on backup and disaster recovery to ensure continued business operations in the event of a natural disaster or the more routine and common IT failure.

Commissioned by EMC and researched by independent research company Vanson Bourne, the report looks at the state of backup and disaster recovery in Europe to understand how well companies are poised in case of data loss and systems downtime.

Survey Findings:

Failure happens: Disruption more likely from an IT problem than a natural disaster
The research showed that it is not the extraordinary that creates problems. The three most common causes of data loss and downtime are:

• Hardware failure: 61%
• Power failure: 42%
• Data corruption: 35%

This is in comparison to only 7% of systems downtime or data loss cited from a natural disaster and only 8% attributed to employee sabotage. Regardless of the cause, 44% of organisations reviewed and changed their procedures for backup and recovery in response to an incident. Furthermore, 27% of businesses increased their spending on backup and recovery after a disaster.

"The results of the survey show that there is a need to rethink backup and recovery strategies in Europe," says Kelly Ferguson, Director of EMEA Marketing, EMC Backup Recovery Systems Division. "We live in an economic time when investments need to be made wisely and there can be no tolerance for interruptions to the business because of an IT systems failure. With a properly thought out next generation backup approach, companies can improve both recovery from day-to-day outages as well as recoveries from something more severe."

Economic impacts:
Lost revenue attributed to systems downtime
The study identified that there are measureable business impacts from systems downtime, with the top three cited as:

• Loss of employees productivity: 43%
• Loss of revenue: 29%
• Delay in product development: 27%

Systems failure resulted on average in two lost working days for the businesses in the survey. This is the equivalent of 28,391 man-hours for a company employing approximately 2,000 employees.

                               What were the causes
           of your data losses and/or systems downtime?

"Backup and recovery is a fundamental part of business and an essential element of information management," says Neil Fisher, Vice Chairman, the Information Assurance Advisory Council (IAAC), the independent, not-for-profit body which promotes good information management and assurance practices. "The EMC-sponsored survey highlights the high level of incidents where businesses have overlooked the importance of planning for events, even ordinary ones. It really doesn’t matter if the events are routine, acts of god or the result of criminal activity. Companies who plan for events and who invest in secure and speedy recovery will be the market winners."

Across Europe, 49% of companies are obligated by either insurance policies or regulatory requirements to have a disaster recovery plan. However, with the right backup and disaster recovery approach, companies can achieve cost-savings from insurers. Just over a quarter of the organisations surveyed were offered reduced premiums by their insurance provider depending on their IT systems backup/disaster recovery strategy.

Unraveling tape: 40% still depend on tape
but majority are looking to replace it
The research found that businesses are spending, on average, 10% of their IT budgets on backup and recovery, and 29% of businesses do not feel they are spending enough. For backup and disaster recovery purposes, 40% of companies still rely on tape, with an average annual cost of €74,000 on transporting, storing, testing and replacing tapes. Where tape is used for disaster recovery purposes, 10% still have an employee take home a copy of the backup tapes with them.

Overall, 80% of organisations using tape are looking to move beyond it, with the top reasons cited as:

• Speed of restoration 39%
• Faster backups 33%
• Lack of durability 26%

Preparedness for routine disruption or more significant incidence starts with a next generation backup approach. The survey shows a reaction after a disaster to spend more on backup and recovery, but the damage is done in terms of time and money during a downtime. Raising visibility for the most common problems facing companies today and the associated economic consequences, organisations can proactively review their own strategies for backup and recovery to ensure they can meet business requirements.

  As a percentage of your organisation’s annual IT budget,
   approximately how much does your organisation spend
               on IT systems backup and recovery?

Survey Methodology
For the European Disaster Recovery Survey 2011: Data Today Gone Tomorrow: How Well Companies Are Poised For IT Recovery study, Vanson Bourne interviewed 1,750 IT decision-makers in private and public sector organisations across the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Benelux and Russia. Each organisation ranged between 250 and 3000-plus employees and represented industries including manufacturing, retail, financial services and telecoms.