Organizations must continue to examine their data backup and recovery processes and make adjustments to ensure business continuity and mitigate the risk of downtime.
New York, NY (PRWEB) April 17, 2014
BUMI (Backup My Info!), the premium provider of managed online backup and recovery solutions for small to mid-sized businesses, today announced the findings of an independent industry study of leading IT consultants regarding their data backup and recovery tools, initiatives and concerns.
According to the survey, 88 percent of respondents indicated their clients have some type of backup and recovery strategy in place. However, more than one-third of respondents (39 percent) do not believe their clients are properly prepared for a large-scale disaster or outage.
Confidence in restoring data spanned a broad range; 79 percent expected the timeline to be within hours and 19 percent indicated it would require several days. Approximately 2 percent had no confidence their data would be restored correctly at all.
The study also uncovered that less than half of respondents (44 percent) checked client backups daily for errors, 15 percent checked weekly, 21 percent checked monthly and 8 percent checked annually. An astounding 13 percent never check for client backups for errors.
“Data backup is not a ‘set it and forget it’ operation,” said Jennifer Walzer, CEO of BUMI. “This study suggests there is a lack of urgency to ensure that backup errors either do not occur or get corrected quickly. Additionally, these findings underscore the need for IT consultants, channel partners and their respective clients to work with a trusted partner to ensure data backup and recovery procedures are managed proactively and continuously.”
When backup errors are found, only 19 percent of the IT professionals surveyed resolve them in less than an hour, 52 percent resolve them within a day, 25 percent resolve them within a week, and 4 percent ignore them completely.
With SaaS, hosted cloud solutions, BYOD, and virtualization becoming more prevalent, IT environments are growing in complexity. Sixty-five percent of respondents thought a hybrid model of cloud and onsite appliance is the best strategy for reliable restoration of data.
Added Walzer, “While today’s complex environments support data accessibility from a broad range of devices located within and beyond the firewall, they are also vulnerable when a disaster or outage occurs. Organizations must continue to examine their data backup and recovery processes and make adjustments to ensure business continuity and mitigate the risk of downtime.”
Additional Study Highlights
- The top three decision criteria for selecting a backup and recovery vendor are: data security, technical service and support, and technology features and functionality.
- All data is not backed up equally: Microsoft Exchange and other email platforms, SQL databases and Microsoft Office files are the top three applications that take priority.
- Compliance is also a huge and ever-changing challenge, with HIPAA (52 percent), SOX (36 percent) and SEC 17a-4 (30 percent) rounding out the top three regulatory requirements organizations need to adhere to with respect to data backups.
The survey was conducted during the fourth quarter of 2013 and is based on responses from 100 independent IT professionals, including managed service providers, value added resellers, and other channel consultants. Industries represented include financial services, healthcare, technology, legal, accounting, real estate, non-profit and government.
About BUMI
Manhattan-based BUMI (Backup My Info!) is a premium managed service provider specializing in data backup and recovery. Founded in 2002, the company's Here, There and Everywhere data backup and recovery solutions are utilized by more than 500 businesses. BUMI clients include professional service organizations such as banking, financial, insurance, accounting, hedge funds and law firms. The company is known for its relentless passion for customer service and support, and has won numerous awards, including Customer Service Provider of the Year and 10 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit http://www.bumi.com or call (866) 444- BUMI (2864).
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