Disaster Recovery Data

I know everyone always says that they are “drowning in data,” but I’m always looking for more.  So, I was very happy this week when a very large pile of data landed in my email inbox. The data were the results of research commissioned by EMC and performed by VansonBourne. VansonBourne just released a report based on the research entitled “European Disaster Recovery Survey 2011: Data today gone tomorrow, how well companies are poised for IT Recovery.”

I provided a link to the  report, in case you want to read the entire report, but let me tell you some of what I found interesting.  First there was this:

A quarter of organizations have experienced data loss within the last twelve months.

Hardware failures are the most frequent cause of data loss at over 60%, and I should probably write more about how Axxana protects against data loss when there is a hardware failure, because we do. Instead I’ve written a lot about the risk of natural disasters; maybe too much, since natural disasters accounted for only 7% of the reported data losses. It’s just that when a natural disaster occurs, like an earthquake or a flood, the risk to your data can be enormous.  Just ask the folks in Japan or Thailand.

More interesting, though, than the cause of data loss, were the reported consequence of data loss.  Here are a few data points from the report on the impact of data loss:

• 43% reported loss of employee productivity
• 28% reported loss of revenue
• 14% reported loss of customers
• 12% reported loss of repeat business

In this fiercely competitive business climate, employee productivity is extremely important in trying to derive profit from revenue. Every deal and every customer is important, and losing repeat business from an existing customer may be the worst outcome of all, since that should be the most profitable.

Even though the average amount of data lost was relatively small at only 400GB, the consequences were significant, which is why we advocate protecting 100% of your data for all applications. When it can be done so cost effectively, why risk losing productivity, revenue, customers, and repeat sales.