Q&A with Joe Forgione of SEPATON

VSM: What is the SEPATON Data Protection Index survery & what was the objective of the survey?

JF: The SEPATON Data Protection Index is an annual survey of large enterprises with at least 1,000 employees and at least 50 terabytes of primary data to protect. The objective of the survey was to quantify current data protection and disaster protection challenges for enterprise data centers and the trends that matter most to enterprise managers. Specific areas covered by the survey included key data protection challenges facing enterprises, business objectives and technical requirements; and data protection technologies currently in use and planned for the next year. The survey was conducted in Q2 2011 and elicited responses from 581 IT professional across North America and Europe, of which 168 met SEPATON’s criteria for large enterprise.

VSM:  What were some of the key findings and common themes uncovered from the survey?

JF: The Data Protection Index results indicate a growing concern in enterprise data centers about their ability to adequately protect massive data volumes and increasingly complex environments. Unabated data growth continues to be the most significant data protection challenge. Secondly, large enterprises are increasingly focusing on protecting data in branch locations and in implementing more effective disaster recovery solutions. Disaster recovery reporting is rated most frequently as the critical IT spending priority for 2011/2012.

VSM: The report cites that enterprises continue to face the challenges of protecting enormous data volumes and handling rapid data growth. How quickly are data volumes growing and what impact is this having on backup and recovery strategies?

JF: The enormous volumes of data currently being protected by enterprises today is growing quickly. The number of respondents that reported having greater than thirty percent annual growth increased from twenty-eight percent of respondents in 2010 to thirty-three percent of respondents in 2011. Data centers now face a growing challenge of “sprawl” as they add more and more systems to handle data growth. Seventy percent have had to add a disk-based data protection system to scale their backup performance or capacity in the last twenty-four months. Adding these systems is adding hours of administrative burden to IT staff.

VSM: The survey identified respondents’ main data protection challenges and concerns. What were the top three?

JF: Concerns about disaster recovery and regulatory compliance continue to be key concerns for enterprise managers. In our 2010 survey, “improve disaster recovery for primary and/or secondary sites” was rated at the top IT priority for the coming year. In this year’s survey, “Data will be unrecoverable in the event of a disaster” and “Regulatory compliance issues (retention, restore, etc.)” were rated as the two greatest backup/data protection fears. “Adopting/migrating to new technology will cause disruption” ranked third among the greatest backup/data protection fears. IT managers are faced with the challenge of addressing massive data growth and delivering higher service levels with new technologies without putting current operational efficiency at risk.