...34% of organisations say that cloud computing will become integral to their data protection plans over the next year.
CA Technologies commissioned independent research in May 2011 to investigate the data protection and disaster recovery (DR) policies of organisations in Europe and Asia Pacific. This report highlights the key findings across Europe and provides insights into how these policies can be improved.
Cloud resources becoming important part of data protection strategies
The use of cloud computing amongst businesses has been increasing rapidly in recent months. At the same time, the amount of data that companies have to manage continues to explode and companies are under renewed pressure to keep it safe. The results from this survey show that investment in business continuity continues to rise, and much of this spending is starting to be directed towards solutions that use cloud computing resources.
Of the companies that are already using cloud, a very high proportion are confident in the safety of their data, whether they are utilising public or private cloud. This highlights the positivity of the current trend towards cloud as a data protection resource.
DR incidents
Incidents leading to data loss are extremely prevalent – 94% of all organisations surveyed had experienced data or application loss over the last year. The causes of the losses were varied, but across every country, IT systems failure (such as hardware or network failure) emerged as the number one trigger. Companies need to be able to predict the likelihood of different types of incidents happening and design an infrastructure that minimizes both their frequency and their impact.
DR planning
The majority of companies admit their data is inadequately protected – only 27% are confident enough to say they have a formal and comprehensive disaster recovery plan. This in part explains the consistently high levels of data loss. Poor data protection strategies are primarily attributed to a lack of both senior management support and budget..
*The survey was conducted by an independent research firm, Coleman Parkes. All interviews were undertaken during May 2011.