Data loss and downtime costs Singapore US$1bil: EMC survey

By Digital News Asia December 5, 2014

66% of enterprises experienced data loss or downtime in last 12 months
43% still lacking a disaster recovery plan for emerging workloads

Data loss and downtime costs Singapore US$1bil: EMC survey

IN THE last 12 months, data loss and downtime has cost Singapore enterprises more than US$1 billion, according to a new global data protection study commissioned by EMC Corporation.

Across the Asia-Pacific region, the average loss was US$34 billion and the study found that global data loss is up by 400% since 2012, with an average total loss of 2.33TB per company.

The good news is that the number of data loss incidents is decreasing overall. However, the volume of data lost during an incident is growing exponentially.

The EMC Global Data Protection Index, conducted by Vanson Bourne, surveyed 3,300 IT decision makers from mid-size to enterprise-class businesses across 24 countries, including 125 respondents from Singapore.

In addition, 70% of Singapore organizations are still not fully confident in their ability to recover after a disruption, with 43% of organizations still lacking a disaster recovery plan for emerging workloads.

Only 6% have plans for big data, hybrid cloud and mobile, with 62% rating these environments as ‘difficult’ to protect. With 30% of all primary data located in some form of cloud storage, the report noted that this could result in substantial loss.

Guy Churchward, president of EMC Core Technologies said the research noted the research highlights the enormous monetary impact of unplanned downtime and data loss to businesses everywhere.

“With 62% of IT decision-makers interviewed feeling challenged to protect hybrid cloud, big data and mobile, it’s understandable that almost all of them lack the confidence that data protection will be able to meet future business challenges,” he added.

In Singapore 66% of enterprises surveyed experienced data loss or downtime in the last 12 months. In the same time period, the average business experienced more than three working days (27 hours) of unexpected downtime.

Other commercial consequences of disruptions were loss of employee productivity (61%) and loss of revenue (42%).

The findings also showed that Singapore enterprises that had not deployed a continuous availability strategy were almost twice as likely to suffer data loss as those that had.

EMC Singapore managing director Eric Goh said with data protection technologies evolving in parallel with the challenges that are emerging, businesses in Singapore will find it easier to protect themselves.

“By staying abreast of these developments and thinking strategically about data protection, Singapore businesses will be able to better prepare themselves from unplanned and costly incidents that may result in downtime and data loss,” he added.

Adopting advanced data protection technologies dramatically decreases the likelihood of disruption and many companies have turned to multiple IT vendors to solve their data protection challenges.

However, a siloed approach to deploying these can increase risks, with the study finding that those using three or more vendors to supply data protection solutions lost 13 times as much data as those who unified their data protection strategy around a single vendor.

Globally, those with three vendors were also likely to spend an average of US$3 million more on their data protection infrastructure compared to those with just one.

The EMC survey participants were also awarded points based on their responses, ranking their data protection maturity in one of four categories – Leaders, Adopters, Evaluators and Laggards.

Globally, 14% rank ahead of the curve; 11% are classed as “Adopters” and 2% considered “Leaders”. Of all the countries surveyed, China has the greatest number of companies ahead of the curve (30%) and the United Arab Emirates, the least (0%).

Very large enterprises of more than 5,000 employees were twice as likely (24%) to be ahead of the curve than smaller enterprises of 250-449 employees (12%); companies in the United States and The Netherlands were the greatest vanguards outside of Asia Pacific and Japan (at 20% and 21% respectively).

“We hope the global data protection index will prompt IT leaders to pause and reevaluate whether their current data protection solutions are in alignment with today’s business requirements as well as their long term goals,” said Churchward.