88% of Enterprises Would Use Public Cloud as DR Site – Datrium

Datrium, Inc. released findings from its industry report on the State of Enterprise Data Resiliency and DR 2019, which assesses how organizations are implementing DR to protect their data from attack or disaster.

Findings suggest that organizations are growing more concerned about the threat of disaster as a result of ransomware, human error, power failure and natural disaster. The heightened threat of ransomware is particularly concerning for the enterprise data center, with nearly 90% of companies considering ransomware a critical threat to their business, and this is driving the need for DR.

The research also found that the public cloud is increasingly being considered as a DR site. The cloud offers greater ease of use and cost-efficient DR, solving several pain points that are holding organizations back from responding to DR events including the complexity of DR products and processes as well as high associated costs.

The report found that organizations are growing more concerned about the threat of disaster as a result of ransomware, human error, power failure and natural disaster. The heightened threat of ransomware is particularly concerning for the enterprise data center, with nearly 90% of companies considering ransomware a critical threat to their business, and this is driving the need for DR.

The study was developed to identify what DR solutions businesses currently utilize, their confidence in those solutions and how effective the solutions are at helping businesses return to normal operations following a disaster, in addition to the key capabilities IT teams consider when evaluating and selecting a DR solution to create their DR plan.

“This research confirms that ransomware is one of the biggest concerns for IT managers today,” said Tim Page, CEO, Datrium. “This threat is driving people to reevaluate their DR plans. It’s no surprise that more than 88% of respondents said they’d use the public cloud for their DR site if they could pay for it only when they need to test or run their DR plans.”

Ransomware Plaguing Enterprise Data Center
As the nucleus of an enterprise, the data center must be protected from the threat of disaster or deliberate attacks. 50.4% of all organizations surveyed have recently experienced a DR event, with ransomware reported as the leading cause.
• Over 36% of those who experienced a DR event identified ransomware as the primary cause, with power outages (26.1%) the second most common disaster organizations experience, followed by natural disasters (16.6%).
• When asked why the ability to respond quickly to a disaster has become more important, 70.1% of respondents noted the increasing threat of ransomware.

Traditional Approaches to DR Put Organizations at Risk
Traditional DR approaches are lacking. Two significant challenges faced by more than half of organizations who experienced a DR event in the past 24 months were the difficulty of both failover to their DR location and failback.

The top three reasons why failback was difficult included difficulty with format conversion, the amount of time required to failback and challenges in understanding changes in the system since failover.

• More than 54% of respondents said VMs had been converted to cloud native formats and it was difficult to convert back to a vSphere format.
• Over 52% said the amount of time required to failback was difficult.
• More than 47% claimed it was difficult to understand the incremental changes that had occurred in the system since failover.

Pay-for-Use DR in Public Cloud in High Demand
The industry norm today is to have physical sites for DR, however the industry is shifting toward DR in the public cloud. 88.1% of respondents said they would use the public cloud as their DR site if they would only have to pay for it when they need it. The most common approach to DR according to 52.7% of respondents is having more than one physical DR site.

“As companies weigh the best defense options vs. ransomware, they should consider the benefits of using the public cloud for their DR sites. They can counter the high costs of traditional DR solutions and free their IT staff to focus on revenue-generating initiatives. The public cloud offers lower management overhead and costs along with lower risk and higher reliability in testing and executing DR plans,” added Page.

23% stated that their organization is not responding to DR events as effectively as it could be. The top three considerations holding organizations back from responding to DR events include: 1) the complexity of DR products and processes, 2) high associated costs and 3) lack of staff skilled in managing DR.

Growing Threat of Disaster Increases DR Budgets
Given the growing threat of disasters, DR budgets are increasing.
• 74.9% of respondents stated that their DR budget has increased over the past 12 months, and 21% reported that the increase was significant.
• Only 1% of respondents noted a decrease in DR budget.
• In light of growing threats, nearly three-quarters of IT leaders expect their DR budget to increase in the next 24 months.

“It’s our mission to bring enterprise-grade DR to every IT team by cutting cost and complexity with an on-demand failproof model leveraging VMware Cloud on AWS,” said Page. “Datrium also announced new DR as a Service capabilities that provide VMware users, both on premises and in the cloud, a reliable, cost-effective cloud-based DR solution with the industry’s first instant RTO restarts.”

The report findings are based on a survey of 395 IT leaders from organizations with 100 employees or more that have DR plans already in place.