According to the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery (DR) Index 2012 vertical market findings, the public sector is the least confident industry in backup and disaster recovery, with most respondents citing a lack of budget and resources as the key challenges. A third (33%) do not spend any budget at all on backup and DR and 41% say they lack skilled IT personnel to manage all their systems.

The Acronis survey of almost 6,000 small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) in 18 countries, including Australia, showed that over half (65%) of public sector organisations would suffer substantial downtime in the event of a disaster. Two thirds say their DR is not well managed, with almost half (47%) saying that their business executives are not supportive of their backup and disaster recovery operations. When asked if they had made protecting their data more of a priority because of the natural disasters in 2011, only one in five (21%) had escalated the issues they face to their managers.

The survey findings also show that the public sector is relatively slow, compared to other industries, to adopt virtualisation. A quarter (23%) of all public sector organisations have not adopted virtualisation at all. Similarly, the public sector is the least likely to protect its virtual servers, with 70% claiming they either do not back up or do not know if they back up their virtual servers as often as their physical ones.

The cloud is however proving a more popular alternative for the public sector, with 92% predicting they will be using the cloud in the next 12 months and half (55%) agreeing that the cloud enables lower operation costs. However, a shocking 39% have no offsite backup strategy at all, so in the case of an on-site disaster they could not recover.

The vast majority (76%) of public sector IT managers surveyed believe their greatest challenge in a hybrid environment is moving data between physical, virtual and cloud environments. Yet the survey found that most businesses are still failing to consolidate their backup and disaster recovery tools to address this challenge. Most rely on multiple tools, with a third (32%) using three or more different solutions to protect their data. Two thirds (63%) use separate solutions for their physical and virtual environments.

Commenting on the findings, Karl Sice, General Manager – Pacific from Acronis, said: “Public sector budget cuts globally are hitting every department hard, but it could be a positive catalyst for change. By embracing new technologies, such as virtualisation and cloud, and by consolidating the number of backup products they have, many public sector organisations could improve their disaster recovery processes and save money.”

Read the Full research report here.