Disaster Preparedness Buoys Cloud, Virtualization, and Mobile Adoption at SMBs

Cloud, virtualization, and mobile -- all three are big buzz words. A survey of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) conducted by Symantec Corp, 2012 Disaster Preparedness Survey, looks at SMBs are often adopting the technologies with disaster preparedness in mind. The bottom line: it’s paying off.

“Today’s SMBs are in a unique position to embrace new technologies that not only provide a competitive edge, but also allows them to improve their ability to respond to disaster while protecting the information that fuels their livelihood” said Brian Burch, vice president of Marketing Communications for Symantec Corp. “Technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing, and mobility, combined with a sound plan and comprehensive security and data protection solutions, enable SMBs to better prepare for and quickly recover from potential disasters such as floods, earthquakes and fires.”

The company found that more than one-third of SMBs (35 percent) employ mobile devices., and 34 percent have deployed or plan to deploy server virtualization. Cloud computing is also hot: 40 percent are deploying public clouds and 43 percent are deploying private clouds.

Concerns about improving their disaster preparedness played a part in SMBs’ adoption of these technologies. “In the case of private cloud computing, 37 percent reported that disaster preparedness influenced their decision, similar to the 34 percent who said it affected their commitment to public cloud adoption and server virtualization. This held true with mobility as well, with disaster preparedness influencing the decision 36 percent of the time.”

Are they getting what they’d hoped for? The survey participants say they are; particularly the 71 percent who said virtualization improved their disaster preparedness. “In the case of private and public cloud they also saw improvement, according to 43 percent and 41 percent, respectively.” Mobility increased disaster preparedness for 36 percent of respondents.

The survey of business and IT executives at 2,053 SMBs (companies with 5 to 250 employees) across 30 countries was conducted in February and March. It is available at no cost here; registration is not required.

Posted on 05/14/2012