Data Protection is one of the least glamorous yet important disciplines in the data center. In many respects it’s like being the goalkeeper in a soccer game – when you do your job effectively, it’s easy to get overlooked. But, if you fail, it happens when everyone is watching and it generally results in a loss.
As organizations seek new ways to drive efficiencies and reduce costs, the need for data protection doesn’t go away. More often than not, it actually becomes much more important. Customers want their data to be protected wherever it resides, regardless of whether it is in their data center or in the cloud. They also want it to be easily accessible irrespective of where the data is located.
Whenever I meet customers, one of the biggest areas of concern is around measurement and understanding – how do I know I’m delivering the right level of protection for my customers and where are the gaps in my strategy?
The reality is that while every customer is different, given EMC’s position as an industry leader, we can offer some clear direction on common problem areas based on what we’re hearing from customers directly. Over the course of many of these discussions, we continue to hear that one of the most interesting things we can share is the data that we use to help us determine our future product strategy. As a direct result of this feedback, today we are releasing the new EMC Global Data Protection Index.
Chris Ratcliffe, EMC’s SVP Marketing for Core Technologies introduces the Global Data Protection Index.
The EMC Global Data Protection Index is based on an independent research project that surveyed 3,300 IT professionals in 24 countries that was specifically designed to give EMC and our customers insight into the business consequences of data loss, the maturity level of data protection strategies in multiple regions and the level of confidence that IT leaders have in being able to meet the needs of new workloads such as cloud, mobile and big data.
Rather than just expose this vast data and let customers come to their own conclusions, we’ve done some analysis based on regional and market variations and we feel that the results are both insightful and eye opening.
For me personally there were two core data points that stood out. The first was the sheer costs associated with data loss: based on this research the annual cost is $1.7 trillion. To put that in perspective, it’s more than the annual GDP of Australia. The other was that 30% of all primary data is located in some form of cloud storage, yet 76% of those surveyed lack a recovery plan for hybrid cloud environments.
Take the survey for what it is – a snapshot from a representative sample of organizations around the world. We hope that business and technology decision makers use it as a starting point for conversations within their own organizations to find the gaps that may leave them exposed. Global and regional findings are available on our microsite.
