Business Continuity Tools in Greater Demand

By Greg McNevin

October 25, 2007: According to a new US survey by data protection specialist SteelEye Technology, the adoption of business continuity tools is on the rise.

In its annual Technology Business Continuity Index, the firm found evidence of a rising year-to-year adoption of technologies taking advantage of redundant and geographically separated disaster recovery sites, such as automated data replication and application recovery solutions.

While it doesn’t list the actual amount of customers surveyed, the company claims 79 percent of those with a business continuity plan in place reported implementing an automated data replication solution between their primary production site and their disaster recovery site. This represents a healthy increase from 63 percent the previous year.

The firm also found that organisations are deploying automated application recovery solutions in greater numbers, with 66 percent (up 10 percent on last year) of those surveyed claiming they have implemented an automated application recovery solution.

“Organisations aren’t just focusing on storage - they’re realising that assuring business continuity is about much more than keeping a backup of customer data - you need to keep applications up and running,” said Bob Williamson, Senior Vice President for SteelEye.

“Cost concerns begin to fall away when they see the efficiency gains from affordable failover technologies, and simply disappear as IT leaders come to understand the true business cost of application downtime,” added Williamson.

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