Despite 2011 experiencing record levels of environmental, economic and political upheaval, the 2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index
findings from the industrial sector, namely construction and
manufacturing, reveal that only 53 percent of respondents were confident
they could recover quickly in the event of a disaster.
The
global downturn is forcing manufacturers to focus on cost reduction and
“doing more with less.” This could explain why nearly half (45 percent)
of those surveyed cited lack of budget and IT resources as their key
challenges in data recovery. One in ten (11 percent) said they spend
nothing on backup and disaster recovery, and a quarter state they don’t
have sufficient support from their senior business executives. In a
highly competitive sector where tolerance for downtime is extremely low,
it’s concerning that only 45 percent say they would not suffer
substantial downtime in the event of a serious incident or natural
disaster.
New
technologies such as virtualization and the use of cloud services,
which should bring efficiencies to an organization, are also bringing
new challenges to IT departments. The vast majority (67 percent) of
industrial firm IT managers surveyed believe their greatest challenge in
a hybrid environment is moving data across physical, virtual and cloud
environments. One in four (26 percent) have virtualized half or more of
their production servers, and this figure is set to grow by 30 percent
in the next 12 months. Despite this growth, many are putting their data
at risk, with nearly 40 percent confirming they only back up virtual
servers at monthly or irregular intervals.
The
security and availability concerns had previously slowed the adoption
of cloud for disaster recovery. However, the Disaster Recovery Index
also revealed a rising interest in cloud adoption with 94 percent
predicting they will be using the cloud in some form in the next 12
months. What’s more, 53 percent recognize the operational cost
reductions that can be achieved, but most are not embracing the cloud
for their backup strategy. Nearly a third (29 percent) stated they have
no offsite backup strategy at all.
Due
to this inconsistent approach, many organizations are struggling to
manage their data in hybrid physical, virtual and cloud environments.
Many still use multiple, disparate tools, which are likely to be spread
across multiple sites, with just over a third (36 percent) managing
three or more different solutions to protect their critical data. They
may also be employed for diverse tasks, such as data backup, system
imaging, patching, migrations and testing, which can lead to mistakes
and inefficiencies.
Commenting
on the findings, Seth Goodling, Virtualization Practice Manager at
Acronis said: “The pressures on the industrial sector are escalating.
Manufacturers have a reputation for quality management, optimization and
automation, yet it’s clear that their backup and disaster recovery
strategies are not keeping up with the rising adoption of virtualization
and cloud technologies. With speed being a key competitive
differentiation and increasing productivity being a number one priority,
there is an increased intolerance for any downtime. Organizations in
the industrial sector need to embrace new technology to help them
consolidate and standardize their data recovery plans. In doing so,
confidence levels will rise and IT managers’ roles will become easier.”