Current Status of IT Disaster Recovery in the Asia Pacific
A recent survey of more than 2000 IT decision makers in Japan and the Asia Pacific provided a snapshot of common causes of downtime and data loss at a country-specific level. It also shed light on locations and solutions used for off-site data back-up and storage, areas of IT spending on data storage and disaster recovery, and the primary reasons for wanting to move away from tape storage to alternative solutions in the cloud.
Data Loss and Downtime
According to the Disaster Recovery Survey 2012: Asia Pacific and Japan, which was conducted by the research company Vanson Bourne and commissioned by EMC, the top three causes of data loss included data corruption, hardware issues and power loss. Sixty percent of IT decision makers indicated hardware issues are pivotal to downtime and data loss, whereas 48 percent cited corrupt data. Almost 45 percent held power-loss responsible – the highest percentage being in Singapore. This is surprising as power outages are rare in this region, perhaps hinting at problems with the variable quality of IT infrastructure deployed in enterprises. In Japan, 22 percent bemoaned loss of power, while data corruption and hardware failure was frowned upon by 52 percent. The amount of data loss which occurred over the last 12 months was just less than 625GB.
Data Storage
Another key issue posed in the survey concerned data storage and off-site backup locations. 57 percent reported that off-site data storage is performed at another company location within the country. Third party providers from the same country are generally used for data storage and backup in the company’s primary location.
The highest response was yielded by the question of whether enterprises are seeking cloud storage solutions and online backup as the result of the increased availability of high-speed broadband. Seventy percent wanted to move away from tape backup to alternative data storage solutions due to the capability of faster backups (50%), durability and life cycle (41%) and the speed of data recovery and system restores (42%).
In terms of IT spending on disaster recovery, most participants spend 10 to 12 percent of their budget on disaster recovery initiatives. Over 50 percent are obligated to have a disaster recovery plan in place to meet insurance and compliance guidelines and regulations.
Despite the differences in how countries in the Asia Pacific region deal with data storage and backup, there is at least one relative commonality. Specifically, they deal with an increasing amount of data to relocate within the same backup windows. According to the study, many enterprises in the Asia Pacific region still rely on tape backup systems (38%) or disks (38%). The survey also indicated that a high percentage of enterprises (53%) have plans to migrate from tape to a faster and more efficient cloud solution in order to improve data backup, storage and recovery initiatives.
Cloud providers that companies should look for are preferably those that can offer additional services that can assist them in the shift to the Cloud. GMO Cloud has a set of add-on services including set up, which saves manpower costs and of course, time.
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About the Guest Author:
Aeyne Schriber has more than two decades of accumulated experience in IT security, computer technology, and internet marketing, including technology education and administration field both on the public school and college level. She works worldwide helping companies establish an online presence from small businesses to large enterprises. Her skills as a published copywriter and marketer also include consulting and training corporate personnel and entrepreneurs. For more details, visit www.digitalnewmediamarketing.com
