UK data archiving activities lag behind US, survey shows

Identical surveys conducted in both the UK and in the US reveal that businesses in the US are more active when it comes to archiving data than in the UK. The BridgeHead Software survey also shows that organisations in the UK feel the burden of compliance regulations more than in the US, despite ‘much of the hype about regulation emanating from the US itself’ and finds that more UK respondents than those in the US say that business continuity and disaster recovery is a driver for archiving in their organisation.

Key findings include:

• In the UK, 28 percent of companies do not archive data. In the US, the figure is 23 percent – a small improvement but still a significant minority.

• In the UK, 25 percent of those that do archive use some kind of automated tool. In the US, this figure rises to 32 percent.

• Respondents have different levels of faith in their archive procedures. In the UK, 15 percent of respondents didn’t know how long it would take them to retrieve a vital file lost three months ago, but in the USA this rises to 20 percent. In the UK, two percent of respondents admitted that they wouldn’t be able to find the file, but this rose to six percent among US companies.

• Twenty two percent of UK respondents cited compliance/corporate governance as a driver for archiving, but this figure fell to just 15 percent among US respondents.

• However, asked if regulatory compliance was a factor at all in their business, 48 percent of UK respondents said no, compared to 42 percent in the USA.

• 48 percent of UK respondents say that business continuity and disaster recovery is a driver for archiving in their organisation. In the US the figure is 40 percent, but - despite making backups/restores faster and simpler by reducing the size of primary data stores – archiving, according to the survey, is not the answer to data protection.

• The average size of primary data stores among the UK respondents was 4.37TB, while among US respondents the average size was lower at 3.5TB. This may be explained by figures showing that only 33 percent of UK respondents have an archive of greater than 1TB, while the corresponding figure for the US is a much higher 48 percent, suggesting greater success at identifying data that can be removed from expensive primary storage.

•Date: 22nd Feb 2006• Region: UK/US • Type: Article •Topic: BC stats
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