...34% of organizations say that cloud computing will become integral to their data protection plans over the next year.
CA Technologies commissioned independent research in December 2011 to investigate the data protection and disaster recovery (DR) policies of organizations in the U.S. and Canada. This report highlights the key findings across North America and provides insights into how these policies can be improved.
Cloud resources becoming important part of data protection strategies
The use of cloud computing among businesses has been increasing rapidly. 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 is confident in the safety of their data, whether they are utilizing 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 – all 300 of the organizations surveyed had experienced data or application loss over the last year. The causes of the losses were varied, but 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 26% are confident enough to say they have a formal and comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place. 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 the independent research firm Coleman Parkes. All interviews were undertaken during December 2011.