Survey: Irish companies waiting 40 hours to retrieve essential business data

Datapac today announced the results of a new survey which reveals that Irish businesses expect to wait an average of 40 hours to recover mission critical data that has been lost. The survey of 163 IT professionals in Ireland looked at how organisations are managing the increasing demands placed on their technology infrastructures and business continuity systems.

Datapac’s research found that the amount of data being stored by organisations has increased by an average of 37% over the past year. Despite this rapid growth in data volumes, 26% of Irish businesses surveyed admit they never carry out disaster recovery tests to ensure their data back-ups are recoverable.

The survey also looked at the growing demands being placed on in-house technical resources by changing ways of working. Almost one third (32%) of Irish businesses don’t have technology platforms and support solutions in place to effectively manage mobile working, despite 76% saying that mobile working is becoming more prevalent in their businesses.

In further analysis of IT resourcing and time management, the survey found that IT professionals spend 35% of their time managing day-to-day reactive incidents such as fixing IT hardware, software and printers. Three quarters (75%) of those surveyed believe that the amount of time their IT department spends tacking low-level reactive incidents is compromising their ability to add value to their organisations.

80% of Irish organisations are outsourcing the management and support of some ICT services, such as back-up, storage, security and print, to external managed service providers. The top three drivers for availing of managed services are limited IT resources (51%), ensuring greater security and compliance (44%) and cost savings (44%).

The survey found that Irish businesses are allocating an average of 28% of their annual IT budgets to managed service providers. This would appear to be low considering that the majority of respondents have both limited in-house resources and also wish to be freed up to add more strategic value.

Karen O’Connor, general manager service delivery, Datapac, comments on the results:

“The average length of time to recover mission critical data is unacceptably long at 40 hours. Delays of this magnitude will cause significant financial and reputational damage for most businesses in Ireland. Another worrying finding is that more than a quarter of businesses never carry our tests on their disaster recovery capabilities.

“With data volumes continuing to grow at pace and security threats becoming increasingly prevalent, these are problems that just won’t go away. We recommend that companies perform a full disaster recovery test at least once a year and more frequently for industry sectors with stricter compliance regulations and targets.

“One of the big issues for Irish IT departments is that they are struggling to add value to their organisation while consistently firefighting and dealing with reactive low-level IT incidents. They really need to prioritise what’s most important to their business and give this the time and focus it deserves. With ongoing improvements in automation and managed service delivery, this presents a great opportunity for Irish organisations to have the freedom to innovate and add real value to their businesses.”