Unplanned downtime is the biggest IT management concern for UK businesses: Dell

New industry research by Dell has found that unplanned downtime is the biggest IT management concern for UK businesses surveyed. Even though a quarter of firms surveyed cited unplanned downtime as their number one issue, more than 37 percent still have no disaster recovery plan in place to address this problem. This is despite the fact that nearly a third (31 percent) of those that do have a disaster recovery plan have had to make use of it.

The main reason firms gave for not implementing a disaster recovery plan was that it was not considered a business priority, suggesting a more reactive approach to protecting their corporate data. More than one in ten firms said that they did not have the resources to implement a solution, whilst 17 percent said they either didn’t know how to implement a disaster recovery solution or didn’t know whom to contact for advice.

Key findings included:

* Unplanned downtime is the biggest IT management concern with a quarter citing this as their number one issue;

* 40 percent of the companies that have not implemented a DR solution have looked into disaster recovery in the past year but have not implemented a solution yet, and 39 percent have not looked into it at all;

- Of the respondents that do have a DR solution in place, 9 out of 10 believe that a disaster recovery system is worthwhile;

- Only 29 percent of firms with a disaster recovery plan know how much it costs to implement their solution;

- 43 percent are spending the same amount and nearly one in five have reduced spend on their disaster recovery / IT continuity solution;

- 91 percent of firms with a disaster recovery solution provide it for all company data, with databases being considered the most mission critical applications;

- The majority of firms use tape (64 percent) and back up software (54 percent) to protect their systems and conduct a risk assessment every ten months on average;

- Firms spend an average of 8.3 percent of their IT budgets on disaster recovery;

- The main factors considered when putting together a disaster recovery solution are how to restore data, how and where to store the data and the cost involved.

The research was conducted by TNS Business Services between the 22nd of October and the 5th of November 2003. Two hundred telephone interviews were conducted within the UK across all industry sectors. One hundred of the interviews were with companies that have 51-250 employees, whilst the other half took place with companies that have 250 employees or more.

www.dell.co.uk

•Date: 25th November 2003 •Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC stats
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