44% of Australian SMEs not confident in internal data recovery and backup systems: Survey

Australian businesses are lagging European nations when it comes to critical data recovery services, and the recent floods in Queensland only prove how important critical backups can be when disaster strikes, new research has found.

A new global report commissioned by IT firm Acronis found Australian businesses are among the least confident in the world when it comes to their business’s ability to recovery from a disaster, with Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack.

The survey focused on SMEs with up to 500 employees. Over 3,000 businesses were questioned worldwide, and 259 of those were located in Australia.

In Australia, only 44% of businesses said they were confident in their ability to avoid downtime in the event of a serious incident. Only 36% said they had confidence in recovering quickly, which is well below the 77% and 85% figures recorded in the Netherlands.

Simon Howe, Acronis’s manager for Australia and New Zealand, says while the report is a measure of confidence and doesn’t actually reflect real ability to recover from a disaster, he says the low confidence figures are a concern.

“I would say there certainly is a link between the confidence of a business and the investment in data recovery and disaster management. We see clear differences from one country to another in the survey.”

The survey found Australia achieved a ranking of just 0.25, beating only Italy and France. Germany won top spot, followed by the Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong and Switzerland rounding out the top five.

Australia came in at 11th, with the United States in 10th and Britain in ninth place.

Businesses in Australia also reported they lacked support from executives, and 36% said they did not have an offsite backup and digital recovery strategy in place. Australian businesses also spend less on backup and data recovery than businesses in Germany and the Netherlands.

“When we look at the results across the board, we are seeing clear differences from one country to another. In Germany and the Netherlands, for instance, we are seeing high responses around executive support for these types of back procedures.”

“There are certainly lessons for Australian businesses about how these companies approach data recovery as a priority.”

The report also points out data recovery isn’t a small issue. It references a survey from The Economist which shows data is growing each year at a 60% compounded rate.

Howe also says the floods in Queensland have once again highlighted how serious a data disruption can be for a business or website, particularly one that relies on ecommerce.

“This situation just reminds businesses are important this topic can be,” he says.

The major recommendations for Australian businesses are two ensure data recovery is becoming a boardroom issue, not one that is simply delegated to IT managers.

“Confidence starts from the top,” Howe says. “The level of executive support is critical and only 44% here say they are getting support compared to 73% in Germany.”

“Another challenge is the need for a backup and recovery solution, and the need for unified solution for this. Essentially it needs to be an integrated solution to provide confidence. About 78% of business say they most beneficial thing that could improve backup would be a single solution.”

A single solution exists as a single product that would cover all data recovery and backup services. This could essentially be a software solution or a hired solution through a separate company.

Other recommendations include backup for virtualisation, critical investment in tools and resources for hardware and more training.

The report points out businesses in the index with leaders who were organised around backup procedures suffered the least amount of downtime.