Companies Willing To Switch To Integrated Recovery Mgmt: CA Study

CA has announced the results of a global study indicating that while most enterprise and SMB IT organisations are satisfied with their current backup product, 70 percent of them would consider switching to backup that is integrated with other key recovery management functions, including replication and continuous data protection (CDP). The study showed that key business objectives, backup integration pain and cost reduction initiatives are the top drivers behind their willingness to switch.

The study, conducted by TheInfoPro, an independent research network and supplier of market intelligence for the IT industry, interviewed 205 IT executives from SMB and enterprise companies around the world, including North America, Europe, Brazil and Japan. Respondents indicated that backup integration with CDP and replication are among the top three biggest pain points that would convince them to switch vendors. The research also showed that using the same vendor for an integrated backup and replication solution was the second most realistic backup cost reduction strategy behind centralising backup management.

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The study also revealed that business priorities require data protection beyond traditional backup, led by managing business continuity, quickly recovering data and applications and maintaining application availability – the drivers behind integrating CDP and replication with backup.

“The research indicates that better control over the backup process and the ability to provide high availability and rapid recovery of critical business information are high priorities for IT organisations of all sizes in all geographies,” said Eric Pitcher, vice president, technology for Recovery Management at CA. “The study clearly pointed to integrated recovery management technologies as what IT staffers want to achieve those goals.”

According to the study, top backup vendor selection criteria include the need to avoid costly server downtime, simplifying management, supporting backup and replication of virtual machines, protecting remote and branch office data, and meeting specific recovery time objectives (RTO). Conversely, the study showed that the lack of management support, staff limitations and difficulties with change are the biggest constraints in improving backup environments.

“The study brings to light that IT organisations are willing to make changes if they can cost effectively tackle top data protection, business continuity and disaster recovery challenges,” said Robert Stevenson, managing director of Storage Research for TheInfoPro. “Vendors need to demonstrate that they can deliver the integrated products and how improvements can cut costs, reduce administrative burden and increase backup efficiency.”

The study also pointed to disaster recovery testing as an important requirement in implementing a reliable disaster recovery plan and to backup and replication support for VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V as the most important virtualisation support to businesses.