Seventy eight percent of Middle East users become irate within just one hour of email downtime

User dependency on email means that as little as one minute without email access causes 18% of Middle East users within medium to large enterprises to become irate, and after just one hour, this outcome rises to a staggering 78% of users.

Only 42% regional IT managers surveyed are confident that their jobs would not be on the line following any period of email downtime. With email becoming so business critical to Middle East-based organizations, user tolerance levels are low. If unplanned downtime occurs, 12% of Middle East users become irrate immediately, 16% within one minute, and 48% within just half an hour.

Irate staff are spread throughout all job functions (59%), but are particularly high amongst top management (27%) and IT staff (14%). Despite this finding, 54% of IT managers surveyed did not know how long it would take to restore their email system in the event of an unplanned incident.

The survey, carried out across US, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), also shows that in the Middle East, 26% of companies are permitted to use email for contracts with suppliers (16% in the US, and 35% across EMEA) and 24% for contracts with customers (20% in the US, 38% across EMEA). Sixty-six percent of companies reported that if a manager asked them to locate a particular email, it would not be difficult to recover it on the system, yet 46% of companies surveyed cannot recover emails past one year; including 6% that cannot recover as far back as a single day.

Despite being able to use email for contractually binding matters 4% can only recover from the previous day, 12% can go back one week, 4% back one month, and 6% can recover back to 6 months.

Commenting on the research, Mike Hynes, Regional Manager of VERITAS Middle East, stated, "The results of this regional survey indicate that email is now a vital component of business transactions in the Middle East, yet many companies in the region are unsure whether they can recover email quickly and reliably in the event of downtime.

The insight that VERITAS has gleaned from this regional survey has highlighted some of the key challenges facing organizations in the Middle East, including reliable access to online information and business continuity.

Stress seems to take its toll on Middle East IT managers, with over a third of them (34%) believing that a week without email would be more stressful for them than one of a number of events including starting a new job (12%), a minor car accident (4%) or moving house (8%).

Further survey highlights:
• Across all countries surveyed, Middle East IT managers have the least understanding of how long it would take to restore emails following downtime, and how far back emails can be recovered from, with 26% and 54% respectively answering these questions "don't know."

IT Managers in the Middle East have one of the highest rates of job security across all countries surveyed, with 42% saying that their email system could be down for any length of time, and their job would not be at risk. (Highest was Italy, 50%, and joint second with Middle East is South Africa - at 42%).