SMEs Adopting Virtualisation, Cloud And Mobility For Improved Disaster Preparedness

Symantec Corp. has announced the findings of its 2012 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, which discovered that disaster preparedness is closely connected with small and medium sized enterprise’s (SMEs) adoption of technologies like virtualisation, cloud computing, and mobility. The survey also revealed how willing SMEs are in adopting these technologies, often with improved disaster preparedness as a goal, and how the move is paying off for them.

“Today’s SMEs are in a unique position to embrace new technologies that not only provide a competitive edge, but also allow them to improve their ability to recover from a disaster while protecting the information that their businesses depend on,” said Steve Cullen, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for SMB and .Cloud at Symantec Corp. “SMEs cannot afford lengthy downtimes so the ability to quickly recover from a disaster is critical. Technologies such as virtualisation, cloud computing, and mobility, combined with a sound plan and comprehensive security and data protection solutions, enable SMEs to better prepare for and quickly recover from potential disasters such as floods or fires, as well as lost or stolen mobile devices and laptops.”

Survey Highlights

Virtualisation, cloud and mobility gaining SME traction: It’s not just large businesses looking to cutting-edge technology, but a significant number of SMEs are adopting these innovations as well. More than one-third of them (35 percent) are now taking advantage of mobile devices for business use. Virtualisation is also on the radar of SMEs, with 34 percent either currently deploying or already benefitting from server virtualisation. More popular still is cloud computing, with 40 percent deploying public clouds and a similar number (43 percent) implementing private clouds.

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Effect of disaster preparedness top of mind for SMEs: In many cases, a desire to improve their disaster preparedness played a part in adopting these emerging technologies. In the case of private cloud computing, 37 percent reported that disaster preparedness influenced their decision, similar to the 34 percent who said it affected their commitment to public cloud adoption and server virtualisation. This held true with mobility as well, with disaster preparedness influencing the decision 36 percent of the time.

Early adopters enjoying better disaster preparedness: Whether by design or not, implementing these initiatives has improved the disaster preparedness of most of the survey respondents, particularly in the case of server virtualisation – 71 percent reported that their disaster preparedness improved with virtualisation. In the case of private and public cloud they also saw improvement, according to 43 percent and 41 percent, respectively. And mobility increased their disaster preparedness 36 percent of the time.

Recommendations

The survey shows the importance of embracing innovation to better respond to challenges. In order for businesses to best take advantage of this opportunity to improve disaster preparedness, Symantec recommends taking the following actions:

Start planning now: Develop a disaster preparedness plan today. Evaluate how strategic technologies such as mobile, virtualisation and cloud can help in those efforts.

Implement strategic technologies: Adopt integrated cloud backup for offsite storage and disaster recovery, and automated physical to virtual (P2V) backup conversion so you can recover your physical system to a virtual machine in case of a server failure.

Protect your information: Use comprehensive security and backup solutions to protect your physical, virtual and mobile systems. You may even opt to backup to the cloud.

Review and test your disaster preparedness: This should be completed at least once a quarter.