Saudi companies urged to implement better data protection and business availability infrastructure

At Business Continuity and Resilience: Approaches for Today and Tomorrow, an IT conference being hosted by IDC, Vision Solutions and HP, a premier global market intelligence and advisory firm in the information technology and telecommunications industries, Saudi companies will gain insights on how to develop successful strategies for increasing the stability of their businesses, ensuring their continuity and flexibility in a rapidly changing world, reducing operating costs, achieving maximum return on IT investments, and thereby creating tangible competitive advantage.

A recent survey conducted by IDC among CIOs in the Middle East shows more than 70% of top IT executives in the region see business continuity and disaster recovery as top critical concerns of business organisations, and where most of the IT budget spending in 2012 will go.

"Organisations often ignore data outage, which can be costly and critical. Vision Solutions provides business continuity and high level availability solutions - essentially a set of planning and tools necessary to protect businesses against problems such as large disaster events such as fires or floods, to smaller IT problems such as lost data or broken servers," said Mike A. Khattab, , VP for Emerging Markets of Vision Solutions.

"The relatively small investment they make on business continuity can make a difference to their survival and success. High level availability essentially makes sure that no matter what happens, business will function as usual," he added.

Vision Solutions will be focusing on its latest version of Double-Take Availability ; Double-Take Availability supports recovery of virtual machine workloads to any platform including either another virtualisation solution such as VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V, physical server hardware or into a cloud environment.

"Organizations in the region today are often required to make services available to customers 24/7 and also ensure that customer data is protected and managed efficiently. In order to support these business needs, IT departments are implementing a range of policies, processes, and technology solutions that will help ensure continued availability of critical data and services to their customers, employees, and partners," said Ranjit Rajan, Research Director, Software & IT Services, IDC Middle East, Africa, & Turkey, IDC.

The conference will also offer a unique opportunity to discuss current issues among IT practitioners and leading industry thought leaders. "It is important for businesses to invest in infrastructure that will give them a competitive edge. We're delighted to be a part of this event and showcase our solutions to help companies in Saudi achieve operational efficiency and profitability, and proud to have Vision Solutions and Double-Take solutions adapted to our servers," said Khaldoon El Sayed, HP.

A further highlight of the event will be a keynote address from a senior representative of the Business Continuity Institute in Saudi Arabia who will explain how a credible strategy can ensure high availability, save time, and limit expenditure, while creating conditions that help empower the sustainable development of businesses in the Kingdom. Business Continuity and Resilience: Approaches for Today and Tomorrow will be held on October 8, 2012 at the Marriott Hotel, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.