UK businesses are increasingly confident about their backup and disaster recovery (DR) capabilities, despite many feeling they lack support from the board for their initiatives.
That’s according to a new survey from backup and DR firm Acronis. The company’s 2012 Global Disaster Recovery (DR) Index revealed that UK businesses are on average 17% more confident in their backup and DR capabilities than they were compared to last year’s Index.
In addition to this, confidence in having the right backup and DR resources (meaning the tools/environment), technologies and procedures in place has risen by one-third in the last year.
65% of UK businesses are now checking their backup and DR strategy more regularly, which is up on last year’s figure. Acronis believes this could be because of a number of high profile natural disasters over the last year, such as flooding in Thailand, the tsunami in Japan and earthquakes in New Zealand and Turkey.
"The survey findings suggest that the natural disasters of 2011 have been a catalyst for positive change when it comes to most UK businesses testing their backup and DR operations," says David Blackman, general manager, Northern Europe and MEA, Acronis.
It’s not all good news though. Budgets for backup and DR have remained flat over the last year, totalling around 11% of IT spend, while two in five (around 40%) of respondents feel that their business executives are not supportive of their backup and disaster recovery operations.
One other interesting finding from the result: many businesses are failing to deal with the challenge of adapting their backup and DR tools to cope with the challenge of managing data held in hybrid physical, virtual and cloud environments. Almost half of UK businesses quizzed for the Index use three or more different systems to protect their data, while 49% use separate platforms for their physical and virtual environments.
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"However, for all the positives in the survey, too many strategic-level negatives, such as failure to get executive buy-in and the use of multiple, disjointed solutions, linger for UK businesses when it comes to keeping the business-critical digital assets of a business secure, protected and immediately available, particularly in a hybrid world," Blackman added.
Acronis recently appointed Alex Pinchev as its new president and CEO, replacing Jason Donahue. CBR spoke to Donahue in 2010, you can read both Q&As here and here.
