Data loss issues affect 82% of Mena businesses, infrastructure left outdated

Out of the thousand IT decision makers polled for The Disaster Recovery Survey 2012: Middle East, Turkey and Morocco, 64% have experienced data loss and/or system downtime in the last year and 43% cite loss of employee productivity as the most likely consequence of data loss and downtime. Additionally, 37% of organisations reportedly need at least a day or more to become fully operational after experiencing downtime - which, on average totalled two days per year.

Kelly Ferguson, EMEA Product Marketing Director of the EMC Backup Recovery Systems Division, who chaired the expert roundtable at the launch of the report ahead of EMC World in Las Vegas, addresses the issue of outdated backup systems as one of the report's most notable findings:

"[The report found] 52% are still using tape for backing up data. What's interesting is that 48% of organisations, both in the UAE and in the region, are using CD Rom for disaster recovery. I don't know about you but I can't find a CD Rom in my house, so the fact that organisations are using such a dated technology for protecting very important assets is something worth having a conversation about. For those using tape [for backup], 75% said they want to move away - which is consistent across the UAE and wider region."

The definition of 'disaster recovery' misunderstood in IT industry

When it comes to the issue of disaster recovery there may be confusion on how one person may interpret 'disaster' compared to another, with a completely subjective interpretation.

What can be agreed on is that prevention is far preferable to the cure. Hossam El Kobrosy, Technical Services Manager, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, stresses the key to disaster recovery is ensuring continuity in the first place: "For many, a disaster is damage to a data centre, or another loss of data, in the end the disaster is a disruption to the running of your service. From a customer perspective, the key is to ensure continuity in the service you provide to your customer."

Unplanned outages of any kind could be described as a disaster, and such a term may conjure up a worst case scenario in the minds of decision making CIOs, but the reality is that data outages are an almost inevitable occurrence, so we can expect to see greater investment into both recovery and backup.

The EMC report found the top reason for data loss was hardware malfunction, with 55% of respondents selecting that option, followed by software failure (40%) and security breaches (36%) - whether or not an individual would label any of these events as a disaster would depends on the value of the data itself, but not many would dispute they are actually likely incidents.

"The word disaster makes people think of something natural like an earthquake or tsunami," says Megha Kumar, Research Manager for IDC MEA. "A lot of things have to do with operational recovery, so when you have hardware or software failure, this is something a company can prepare for. [These things] will happen - there's no guarantee that they will not - so this is something companies must prepare for."

"Information continuity is a major subset within business continuity. If you have no information then clearly you have no business. There will always be certain applications, and the information generated from them, that will be critical for your business and decision-making".

Technology and customer maturity should push change

With business-related technologies developing rapidly, the report's findings about data backup are a little jarring. Speaking to AMEinfo.com, Said Akar, EMC's District Manager for South Gulf, says backup seems to have been left behind while other trends and resources are consistently evolving: "What was surprising for us was the number still using CD Roms, which is something that is really frustrating and puts a big question about capability for dealing with customers."

Akar gives credit to customer awareness, which is apparently evolving with better information sharing online and raised expectations from improved competition. The change in the competition landscape has inevitably driven change: "If you take a look at different sectors and industries, in the UAE for example, you see that customers are more advanced and you'll see a higher level of maturity and coordination in IT compared to others.

"But previously, a lot of companies had the privilege to work with less competition and cared less about improving service to end users. Today they have to improve, have to have governance in place and have to have new technologies in place in order to differentiate themselves from others in the market."