Enterprises step-up their DR strategies: Symantec DR survey

New Delhi: Symantec announced the India findings of its fifth annual IT Disaster Recovery survey, which demonstrates rising disaster recovery (DR) pressures on enterprises caused by soaring downtime costs and more stringent IT service level requirements to mitigate risk to the business. The study also shows that the DR budgets are higher in 2009 and they are expected to further increase in the next 24 months.

Even as 79 percent of Indian enterprises faced computer system failures in the last one year, virus attacks (67 percent) and fear of data loss (51 percent) are the major initiators for disaster recovery plans in Indian enterprises. Changes in technology infrastructure (eg virtualization, blade computing, etc.) natural disasters, pressures from customers, suppliers, and competition and compliance factors are other major factors that prompt the Indian enterprises to opt for a disaster recovery plan. Owing to disasters-67 percent of Indian enterprises fear loss of data, while 63 percent of the enterprises are concerned about damage to customer loyalty and 49 percent of the enterprises are concerned about damage to competitive standing in the market.

“Disaster recovery is now a boardroom discussion in Indian enterprises. The extent of dent and damage caused by downtime due to natural, manmade and system disasters and the business continuity issues arising from it have made Indian CIOs take a 360 degrees view on mitigation strategies,” said Anand Naik, Director-Systems Engineering, Symantec India. “But as enterprises confront complexities of protecting virtual environments, flat budgets and increasing internal and external risks, disaster recover strategies should be constantly evaluated and upgraded,” he added.
The fifth annual IT Disaster Recovery survey highlights that while recovery time objectives were reduced to four hours in 2009, disaster recovery testing and virtualization are still major challenges for enterprises. Respondents report that DR testing increasingly impacts customers and revenue, and one in four tests fail.