53% Indian Cos Say Cloud Will Be Key To Data Protection

CA Technologies has announced the results of an independent survey that shows businesses in India are increasingly using cloud computing as a key component of their data protection plans. 53% say that within the next year, cloud will play an important part of their disaster recovery and data protection strategies. The results show that as the adoption of cloud becomes more widespread, companies are beginning to appreciate that cloud resources offer a solution for business continuity.

The report: ‘Insights: Data Protection and the Cloud’ highlights that data protection investment in continues on an upward trajectory. Of the 201 organisations surveyed across India nearly all (94%) have seen their data protection budgets remain flat or increase from 2010 to 2011, with 67% enjoying increased investment. The research explored where these budgets will be directed over the coming year, and the findings again underscored the importance of cloud computing.

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Over half of companies (59%) will focus investment on managing a hybrid cloud environment, where private clouds are supplemented with access to resources in public clouds. 30% plan to invest in using public cloud as a backup solution, similarly 25% companies will also focus on better protection of their private cloud.

"The research we’ve released today is really encouraging – increasing numbers of companies plan to use cloud as part of their business continuity strategy," said Chris Ross, Vice President EMEA & Asia-Pacific, CA Technologies Data Management CSU. "We’re seeing lots of businesses use the cloud for offsite back-up and disaster recovery purposes and the survey indicates that many are now looking to a more sophisticated hybrid cloud model too. This highlights the need for a solution that allows them to evolve their data protection strategy at their own pace – whether it be new on-premise technology, using cloud as backup medium or moving to a more complex hybrid cloud model."

Frequent data loss incidents, yet inadequate data protection

Despite the integration of cloud and the positive trend in data protection spending, companies are still vulnerable – 88% of the surveyed companies admitted they have experienced application and data loss incidents in the last year. The most common cause was IT systems failures – such as network, storage, hardware or software failures – which affected over half (53%) of the surveyed organisations.

This high level of data loss is reflected by the companies’ apparent lack of readiness for these types of incidents. Only 27% of companies are confident enough to say they have a full and comprehensive disaster recovery plan. Furthermore, while a high 83% run full testing of their disaster recovery plans at least once a year, a significant 56% don’t achieve their recovery time and recovery point objectives in these tests.

When asked about the barriers to improving their data protection and disaster recovery operations, 38% pointed to inadequate training of IT personnel, 34% to lack of employee understanding of procedures and 34% to inadequate buy in from senior management.

"Today, businesses of all sizes understand the repercussions of not having essential data always available - customers go unserved, SLAs are breached, suppliers cannot supply and staff morale and productivity degrades. However, the survey highlights that data protection strategies are still failing, leaving companies vulnerable - smarter investments are clearly needed," explained Ross. "A previous CA Technologies study has shown the cost of outages to a company over a year is in the region is of $350,000. Senior management need to consider this cost, against the much smaller investment required to keep data and applications adequately protected on an ongoing basis."