SMEs Must Consolidate Disaster Recovery into Single Solution

Survey Confirms SMEs’ Need to Consolidate Disaster Recovery and Data Protection Strategies into a Single Solution across Physical, Virtual and Cloud Environments

Sydney, 11 October 2011 – Acronis, a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today announced the results of a survey of Australian businesses into their current and planned backup and recovery strategies. The answers to the survey, conducted from the Acronis stand at the 2011 Microsoft Tech.Ed Australia conference in September, highlight the issues faced by companies of all sizes as they deal with operating securely and efficiently in ever more complex ICT environments.

Of the 800 companies represented in the survey, 69 percent currently have separate software solutions for disaster recovery and data protection within their IT infrastructure. However, more than half of the respondents revealed their wish for a single solution able to manage both.

Karl Sice, General Manager, Pacific at Acronis, said: “The survey gives us an excellent snapshot of the current situation in Australia. Our larger organisations, with dedicated ICT resources, are struggling with effective backup and recovery strategies and the issue is even more profound in smaller organisations with very limited resources”

Enterprise size companies (which Acronis classifies as those companies with more than 100 servers) are significantly more likely to have one solution for backing up both virtual and physical machines (60 percent), against 52 percent of mid-range companies and 42 percent of smaller companies (those with fewer than 10 servers). The survey also revealed that 12 percent of small companies never back up their virtual machines. This is three times the rate of risk exposure of their larger counterparts.

The survey also revealed a definite shift to the potential benefits of cloud with more than 85 percent of respondents having either implemented or planning for cloud-based backup.

Another area which emphasises the differences between Australia’s large and small organisations was in the level of access to automated disaster recovery (DR) plans. These provide certainty and the discipline required to ensure minimum downtime in the event of a system failure. They also operate without being an overhead on IT resources. The survey confirmed that 47 percent of the larger companies are benefitting from using a DR solution with a built-in customised DR plan in place. By comparison, less than one-third of smaller organisations are supported by such functionality.

Sice said: “From reactions to our demonstrations at the conference, many IT professionals were delighted to find the answer to their problems with packages such as Acronis Backup & Recovery that provide a single solution across all platforms - whatever their mix of physical, virtual and cloud environments.”

About the Survey
1476 responses were received from 801 companies in the survey conducted from the Acronis stand at the 2011 Microsoft Tech.Ed Australia conference. End users represented 89 percent of respondents, with the remaining 11 percent from the reseller community.

The breakdown by server numbers was: 44.5 percent of the companies had more than 100 servers; followed by 37.9 percent with up to 100; and 17.6 percent with less than 10 servers.

About Acronis
Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis' disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com.au. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis.

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