Cloud Backup Causes Concern For European SMEs
Small and medium sized businesses [SMBs] in the UK and Western Europe are trailing US companies when it comes to backing up data to the cloud as security worries dog the uptake of cloud computing.
Data from IDC showed that 93 per cent of companies in the US are backing up some kind of data to the cloud whereas the figure dropped to some 63 per cent in Western Europe and 57 per cent in Asia Pacific.
Companies in Western Europe and the Asia Pacific region that aren’t backing up to the cloud mentioned security as being concerning with a whopping 59 per cent in Western Europe and 45 per cent in Asia Pacific citing it as the main reason. Meanwhile, just a third [33 per cent] of US firms complained that a lack of security was preventing them backing up to the cloud.
Diverse environments are something that are also posing problems for firms attempting to back up data due to the amount of time it takes to perform the task. This is illustrated by the fact that almost 37 per cent of organisations have to back up virtual, physical and cloud-based servers at the same time. Additionally, among companies that manage virtual infrastructures, 54 per cent have to manage two or more different hypervisors.
On a country-by-country basis, 74.2 per cent of UK IT infrastructures are classified as complex along with 78.1 per cent in Singapore and 77.8 per cent in the US. This is in stark contrast to other countries such as Germany with 38.7 per cent dubbed complex, 48.3 per cent in France and 45.5 per cent in Japan.
“Data sizes and types continue to evolve, as does the number of servers and operating systems each company uses. This leads to a host of new challenges IT managers face to make sure they can back up and protect their data and restore operations quickly,” Eric Burgener, research director of Storage at IDC, told CloudPro.
Downtime is also having a dramatic effect on companies and almost 80 per cent of those surveyed admitted to costs of at least $20,000 [£11,653] an hour or more and over 20 per cent stated it costs them $100,000 [£58,266].
IDC’s survey questioned around 401 firms across eight countries including the UK, US, Singapore, Russia, Korea, Japan, Germany and France.
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