Most organisations have had to implement disaster recover plans
in the past year, according to Symantec's annual
IT disaster recovery survey.
Some 93% of IT professionals at over 1,500 companies in 24
countries around the world said they had implemented disaster
recover (DR) plans to some degree in the past 12 months.
But despite reduced average downtimes of three to four hours,
compared with 12 to 24 hours in 2008, business will have to
improve, the report said.
The high rate of failure of DR tests and the continually
increasing costs of DR recovery are the biggest reasons businesses
need to improve.
The survey found that one in four DR tests failed and
downtime on database servers costs UK business and estimated
average of £1,400, rising to £3,000 for e-mail.
While DR budgets are high, at £30m on average for businesses
with more than 5,000 employees, costs are expected to rise through
2009, while budgets remain flat.
More than half (52%) of the IT professionals questioned expect
increased pressure on IT managers to get more out of existing
assets in the face of no budget increases in 2010.
Businesses have already responded according to the report with
most organisations more than doubling executive involvement in DR
in the past year.
Some 70% of respondents said DR committees involve the CIO, CTO
or IT director, compared with only 33% in 2008.
Organisations can do a better job at curbing the costs of
downtime by using automation tools to minimise human involvement,
said Symantec.
The report also recommends increasing DR plan testing, finding
testing methods that are not disruptive and paying more attention
to virtual environments.
Just over a quarter of organisations still do not include their
virtual servers in DR testing and backup only 36% stored on them,
the survey revealed.
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