Acronis 2012 Global Disaster Recovery Index.

Yesterday, Acronis released its second annual Global Disaster Recovery Index. This is the industry’s largest survey with more than 6,000 respondents in 18 countries worldwide. Given the dramatic natural disasters that took place in 2011, it was interesting to see how each country has responded and changed their practices in the past year.

Some of the US highlights from the survey:

• On average, U.S. respondents said system downtime costs them $388,426 a year.
• About half of U.S. IT personnel felt they would suffer substantial downtime in the wake of a disaster such as inclement weather, a cyber attack, etc.
• 64 percent of U.S. respondents said that the biggest contributor to downtime is human error.
• Overall, the U.S. had more confidence in its backup and disaster recovery controls and procedures than in its resources or technology

Specifically in the US, the confidence level has increased slightly but remained average compared to the rest of the world. The confidence level of the US in 2012 was very much the same compared to last year’s results. One of the main reasons why the US confidence level remained the same was due to the numerous natural disasters that took place last year; specifically the floods, multiple hurricanes, and winter storms. Due to these natural disasters, many businesses tested their plans last year and discovered that they had relevant procedures but inadequate resources and technology in order to feel confident in the event of a disaster.

As mentioned earlier, with the US businesses surveyed, the estimated cost of downtime is on average $390K per year. And more than half surveyed felt they would suffer substantial downtime if they were to suffer a disaster. We discovered that 88% of those surveyed actually experienced a period of downtime that lasted anywhere between 1 and 10 days. 40% lost between 1-3 days, 15% lost 3-10 days and 7% lost more than 10 days. Not to mention, the disasters we are speaking of here not only include natural disasters but human error as well. The top 3 causes of downtime; 1) Human Error 2) Unexpected updates/patches 3) Server room environment issues. Not only do businesses have to prepare for natural disasters but also daily management challenges.

Businesses worldwide admitted that their greatest challenge for effective backup & recovery measures is that right now they are managing a hybrid mix of physical and virtual servers and also bringing the cloud into their IT strategy. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed would like a single solution to manage all environments. Currently, 35% of US businesses surveyed are using three or more solutions to backup there systems. In order to help improve their current position, the top four requests from US respondents included; comprehensive solution for PVC, more reliable technologies, easier to use technologies, and best practices. Overall this shows that there is a great deal of room for improvement and opportunity for the channel to add value and additional services in order to help US businesses feel more confident. Even though confidence levels remain the same compared to last year’s results, with the adoption of new technologies such as the cloud, US businesses can look at these options with more hope that there data is safe and backed up.