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Backup and Recovery Challenges Still Trouble IT Administrators, Survey Finds

Recovery time, reliability, cost lead concerns

• By James E. Powell
• 05/10/2010

A survey of IT administrators in the U.S. and UK cite reducing recovery time, point-in-time data recovery, and lowering backup and recovery solution costs among their top concerns.

The survey, conducted by Double-Take Software (www.doubletake.com), also says the "challenges significantly affect end-user productivity as well as a company’s bottom line."

According to Double-Take:

• Ninety-four percent of administrators are concerned about reducing the time it takes to recover data

• Ninety-four percent also need to be able to recover data at any point in time

• Reducing the backup solution costs was cited by 95 percent of respondents as a key challenge

• Performing recovery testing is important to 93 percent of respondents

• Reducing the risk of data loss was cited by 91 percent of respondents

• Nine in ten administrators (90 percent) want to improve the reliability of their backup solutions

The survey reported that almost half of IT administrators still use tape for backup, which Double-Take says "has been shown to provide significantly less recoverability than disk-to-disk or other data protection methods."

“Today, a company’s IT infrastructure is truly its backbone. Even minimal downtime or data loss can result in devastating effects,” says Dean Goodermote, CEO of Double-Take Software. “IT administrators realize the value that disk-based recovery solutions offer. These solutions are capable of protecting data more frequently than once per day; they are also able to recover faster and with greater flexibility to physical or virtual environments. These types of solutions reflect the changing composition of the data center and are absolutely essential for businesses.”