A study by Veeam reveals that businesses in the U.S and Europe are still not reaping the benefits that virtualisation offers to data protection.
Veeam surveyed over 500 CIOs worldwide and found that 68% believe their backup and recovery tools will become less effective as the amount of data and servers in their organisation grows.
The majority of enterprises reported that they experienced problems with more than 1 in 6 recoveries, regardless of recovery times.
"At first glance, the fears of CIOs look to be correct: despite the potential for faster, more efficient data protection that virtualization offers and the advances modern data protection tools can provide, recovery times have increased since 2011," said Ratmir Timashev, President and CEO of Veeam.
88% of CIOs said they experience capability-related challenges with backup and recovery, with 87% report problems with cost and 84% with complexity.
"This apparent loss of momentum in data protection comes down to two influences. First, virtual infrastructure is constantly growing: as well as forming the majority of IT infrastructure now, it will continue to grow in the future," said Timashev. "Second, organizations are not updating their data protection tools and strategies to match. For example, the majority of enterprises still deploy agents for backup and recovery. This approach works for physical environments but is unnecessary and ill-suited to the virtual infrastructure. Until organizations stop using a physical-world mind-set to view the technology, they will never be able to unlock its full potential."
Virtual infrastructure currently accounts for 51% of enterprise service with the number predicted to reach 63% by 2014.
Nearly 60% said that they plan to change their backup tool for virtual environments by next year. The primary reasons for this were financial, complexity and recovery time objectives.
"Virtualization is reaching a turning point," added Timashev. "Organisations have realised the benefits that the technology can bring on its own: now they are beginning to find out what it is truly capable of when managed and applied correctly. Modern data protection tools, specifically built for virtualization, can unlock this potential as well as eliminate many of the capability, complexity and cost issues IT departments face."
