Business data backup- no longer just ITs problem

“Enterprise organizations are beginning to become aware of the inadequate protection of important data on corporate laptops and mobile devices. As mobile workers are integral to the success of many businesses and carry data that would be nearly impossible to reconstruct if their corporate device were damaged or stolen.”

– Sheila Childs, Vice President of Research at Gartner on backing up business data

Business owners are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of effective endpoint business data backup While data backup and recovery was once solely an IT pain point and responsibility, effective protection, risk reduction and data loss prevention have become top of mind for CEO’s and shareholders due to a number of impossible to ignore realities:

Endpoint Business Data Backup: What the numbers are saying

One of the key challenges acknowledged by Gartner in storage planning for 2012 being that IT tends to look at user data protection in the traditional sense, meaning from the centre out, instead of from the edge, inward – with the main areas of risk and exposure residing on endpoint user devices such as laptops and desktops.

Increased user mobility and the requirement for an effective user data protection solution that addresses operational efficiencies as well as reducing required resources and controlling bandwidth and storage spend have resulted in enterprises placing Improved Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning as their No. 2 spending priority for 2011, according to a recent survey of IT decision-makers conducted by Forrester Research.

When you consider that the average cost of a lost or stolen business laptop is $50 000, (Ponemon Institute Report) with worst-case scenarios reaching close to $1,000,000- this due to the increasing value of enterprise data, organizations have a difficult to ignore financial incentive to backup their endpoint business data.

According to the report titled “Insights: Data Protection and the Cloud,” data protection investment in continues on an upward trajectory. Of the 1,086 organizations surveyed across eight countries in APAC, nearly all (96%) have seen their data protection budgets remain flat or increase from 2010 to 2011, with one-third (34%) enjoying increased investment

Another driving factor in the enterprise adoption of laptop & desktop backup are the operational efficiencies that reduce costs and required resources during user data migration, specifically PC replacement and OS upgrades.

According to Gartner, Windows 7 upgrades are heavily increasing business PC upgrades. Appetite for new PCs among businesses is significantly driving growth in the PC market- in 2011, 385 million PC units will ship worldwide, Gartner predicts, up 9.3% from 2010.

In the SANpulse Technologies survey 51% of respondents indicated that technology refreshes were the top priority for 2011, highlighting that mean time to migrate (MTTM) was critical for rapid adoption of new technologies and fast execution of these operations. This was followed by data center consolidation, which 41.5% of respondents indicated was a top concern.

The increased requirement on organizations to employ business data backup in order to comply with corporate governance regulations such as HIPAA and King III and the liability of directors with regards to this compliance further increases the need to urgently address the issue of user business data residing on endpoint devices such as laptops and desktops. This is intensified by the importance of preventing unauthorized access to the business data sitting on user computers, which can result in negative legal and reputational consequences.

Business owners are beginning to understand that data backup / protection- particularly endpoint business data protection has a direct effect on integral aspects of the company as a whole- as well as having bottom line consequences.

If you would like more information, we invite you to read our white paper : 7 Key Data Backup Software Features