The survey says…

In February 2013, Enterprise Strategy Group conducted the research we will cover below. Survey data was collected from 479 financial buyers such as CIOs, VPs of IT, Directors of IT, and technical buyers such as Storage Administration Professionals, Systems Administration Professionals, and Applications Administration Professionals representing a variety of industry verticals.

Here is what we know, organizations are backing up loads of data. With emerging trends such as big data and ongoing regulatory compliance pressure, data volumes have skyrocketed. This trend is projected to grow exponentially in the coming years. 77% of enterprises indicate that their data is growing at a rate of 5% to 25% annually. This has prompted mid-market firms and enterprises to back up large quantities of data as a form of insurance.

Just how much data is being backed up?

Recent research results show most organizations are backing up at least 1TB of data with 52% of organizations are backing up more than 50TB of data.

What percentage of data is being recovered?

It might surprise you to know that most organizations do not need to recover 100% of their data unless they experience a catastrophic event. While these events may be rare, they can happen. Even so, many companies are unlikely to want to invest the time and energy in recovering all of their data. The key here is to make backup and recovery seamless. Also, with RenovoData’s multiple tiers of storage as well as pricing, it is both realistic and prudent for companies to protect—and recover all of their data should the need arise.

So, exactly how much data ARE organizations recovering?

It turns out, the majority (84%) of the organizations recover less than 20% of their backed-up data annually. But they are paying to recover 100% of their data. RenovoData can close this gap.

How much are enterprises spending on backup and recovery each year?

The answer is quite a bit! 36% of organizations allocate a substantial amount of their budget, $1 million or more, to ensure data protection is a critical aspect of their IT management process that ensures business continuity.

Critical final question: to drill or not to drill?

At RenovoData, we believe recovery drills are a crucial component of your company’s disaster recovery plan. Companies that perform more than 3 recovery drills annually seem to recover a greater percentage of their data during these drills. Recovery drills are an important tool to prove to an organization that they will be able to recover their data when they need it the most.

As we have said, recovery is EVERYTHING!

In the past, data recovery has relied on tapes to back up and protect a company’s vital data. Let’s recap some of the major problems with tape backup: tape backup requires a significant investment of resources such as time, labor, and equipment. Hardware and backup software are expensive, with the cartridges themselves as a continuing cost. Plus, completing daily backups via tape requires immense administrative intervention—that’s time not being spent on revenue-generating tasks.

Two key factors in understanding data recovery in any environment are Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).

1. RTO refers to how quickly your business needs to be able to recover after losing data and can be measured in hours or days. Logic dictates that recovery should be as quick as possible.
2. RPO refers to how much data your company can afford to lose as measured in hours. So, for example, a Fortune 500 company for some types of data might require an RTO of five hours and an RPO of an hour.

The RPO and RTO may vary for different types of data.

This is true for most if not all businesses, regardless of size. Every business needs to determine an RTO and RPO based on its own calculations of risk tolerance and business continuity requirements. As part of this process, it’s important to take a hard look at the type of data your company collects and uses on an hourly, daily or weekly basis. Again, many companies may not fully realize how important a fast recovery is to achieving their business objectives — until they experience a serious data loss.

The impact of a data loss event can be significant with far-reaching consequences.

A retail operation, for example, is constantly collecting data (credit card numbers are one such example) in order to perform such tasks as order fulfillment, as well as analytics related to pricing strategies, inventory supply, and peak periods of demand. This real-time data is essential to remaining competitive in an ever-changing business environment.

Put simply, many companies can no longer afford to rely on a truck arriving each day to take backup tapes offsite as this would potentially put at risk a full day’s worth of valuable competitive business data. With a cloud, they don’t have to.