UK firms are still lagging behind their European neighbours when it comes to using backup and disaster recovery technology, according to new research from Acronis.
The study forms part of the firm’s Global Disaster Recovery Index, used to measure IT managers’ confidence in their backup and recovery operations.
Over one-third (36%) of businesses in the UK have no offsite backup and DR strategy in place, with most citing lack of budget and resources as an excuse for not backing up offsite. Only 27% of UK firms were confident in their ability to avoid downtime in the event of a disaster and just over half (56%) said they were confident of recovering quickly from any downtime. Germany (77%) and the Netherlands (85%) were the clear leaders in this category, according to the survey.
With many businesses looking to virtualisation and cloud computing as a way of reducing outgoings, the research from Acronis suggests managing backup and disaster recovery across physical, virtual and cloud environments will be a struggle for some organisations. Over two-thirds (71%) of UK companies claim they either do not back up, or do not know, if they back up their virtual servers as often as their physical servers.
The majority (76%) of companies quizzed for the survey said the best method for improving backup and disaster recovery capabilities was to have a single platform for managing physical, virtual and cloud environments. However, over half (56%) said they are using different platforms for both their physical and virtual backups and each business uses, on average, two or three different backup and disaster recovery applications.
The Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index ranks countries on their confidence in dealing with backup and disaster recovery readiness. Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland were the top ranked, rated as ‘very confident’. They have the best boardroom buy-in, controls, documented policies and procedures for their backup and disaster recovery operations, Acronis said.
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Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are ‘confident’, Norway and Sweden occupy the ‘middle ground’ and UK, Australia and the United States are labelled ‘laggards’. France and Italy have ‘room to grow’ according to Acronis.
Talking to CBR about the results of the survey, David Blackman, General Manager of Northern Europe, Acronis, said that having better executive buy-in is giving the likes of Germany and the Netherlands an advantage over the rest of Europe, which is one potential reason why the UK is lagging behind.
"The UK has less executive buy-in than Germany, for example, and buy-in means more budget and focus. There is also a lot of legacy infrastructure in the UK, which will hinder the process," he said.
"A lot of firms want a single pane of glass approach to managing backup and recovery," Blackman continued. "It’s easier to run, it’s more secure and it costs less. Companies have perhaps been slow to adopt that approach because they’ve always had different vendors doing different bits. As the technology gets more mature we expect to see more choice and more companies moving to a single physical, virtual and cloud management console."
