A new survey of 200 Australian organisations found over a third are planning to take their disaster recovery and backup to the cloud within 12 months.

The report, commissioned by CA Technologies,  explored where IT budgets will be directed over the coming year.

It found that more than half of companies (57%) will focus investment on managing a hybrid cloud environment, where private clouds are supplemented with access to resources in public clouds. One in five (20%) will focus on better protection of their private cloud.

Scott Caulfield, Director, Data Management, CA Technologies, Australia and New Zealand, said, “We’re seeing lots of businesses use the cloud for offsite back-up and disaster recovery purposes and the survey indicates that many are now looking to a more sophisticated hybrid cloud model too. 

“This highlights the need for a solution that allows them to evolve their data protection strategy at their own pace – whether it be new on-premise technology, using cloud as backup medium or moving to a more complex hybrid cloud model.”

Nearly all (96%) of the surveyed companies admitted they have experienced application and data loss incidents in the last year.  The most common cause was IT systems failures – such as network, storage, hardware or software failures – which affected over nine tenths (91%) of the surveyed organisations.

This high level of data loss is reflected by the companies’ apparent lack of readiness for these types of incidents.  Over four companies in ten (41%) are not confident enough to say they have a full and comprehensive disaster recovery plan.  Furthermore, while a high 95% run full testing of their disaster recovery plans at least once a year, a significant 23% don’t achieve their recovery time and recovery point objectives in these tests.

When asked about the barriers to improving their data protection and disaster recovery operations, 65% pointed to inadequate buy-in from senior management and 48% to lack of budget.

“Today, businesses of all sizes understand the repercussions of not having essential data always available - customers go unserved, SLAs are breached, suppliers cannot supply and staff morale and productivity degrades. However, the survey highlights that data protection strategies are still failing, leaving companies vulnerable - smarter investments are clearly needed,” explained Caulfield.

“A previous CA Technologies study has shown the cost of outages to a company over a year is in the region is of $350,000.  Senior management need to consider this cost, against the much smaller investment required to keep data and applications adequately protected on an ongoing basis.”