Accelerating Backup Performance and Efficiency Top Priorities for Large Enterprises – Sepaton

Sepaton, Inc. announced the results of the fifth annual Sepaton Data Protection Index, an annual survey of large enterprises in North America and Europe with at least 1,000 employees and at least 50TB of primary data to protect.

The survey elicited responses from more than 200 IT professionals across a range of vertical industries to define and quantify current data protection trends and challenges for enterprise data centers.
 
Specific areas covered by the survey, included data protection technologies currently in use; key data protection challenges facing enterprises; and data protection priorities for 2014.
 
Key findings based on the survey results:

• Explosive data growth. Nearly half (43%) reported data growth of more than 15% annually, including 9% who characterized their data growth as “explosive” with growth of 25% or more annually.
• Massive data volumes. More than 52% of respondents have full backup volumes of more than 100TB, including 27% with full backups between 500TB and 1PB.
• More complexity. Most enterprises (27%) are using a mix of tape and virtual tape but many are also using a wide range of other technologies (snapshots, cloud, etc.). Companies are also using a wide range of protocols to backup data. Just 5% are using FC only.
• Inadequate data protection. Nearly half of respondents (46%) did not feel that their backup environment was meeting their needs. 55% are not encrypting their data at rest and more than a fifth of respondents (21%) are not providing disaster protection for their data.
• Focus on accelerating performance and efficiency. Data protection priorities for 2014 are focused on addressing the challenges caused by explosive data growth. Specifically, on increasing backup performance, implementing data tiering, and controlling data center sprawl.

“As the survey report reveals, enterprises are focused on ways to mitigate the results of unprecedented data growth: higher performance systems to meet backup windows, reducing data center sprawl, managing costs and IT complexity by consolidating multiple backup targets, and reducing backup volumes through data tiering,” said Peter Quirk, director, product management, Sepaton. “Enterprises are looking for more efficient deduplication of databases and semi-structured data; fast, hardware-based encryption; and systems that provide performance and scalability to maintain service levels and meet regulatory requirements.”

To download the full survey (registration needed)