Disaster recovery cited as strongest driver for archiving
Second Information Lifecycle Management Audit points to importance of business continuity
Disaster recovery is the strongest driver for business data archival, with tape used by 72 per cent of businesses, according to an audit by eMedia.
The second annual Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) Audit, compiled on behalf of vendor BridgeHead Software, questioned over 350 senior level executives, IT managers systems, network administrators and engineers across North America and the UK.
Respondents were asked which factors drove the requirement for data archiving in their business. Seventy 70 per cent said disaster recovery or business continuity, 62 per cent cited data growth and 58 per cent said regulatory compliance.
Patrick Dowling, senior vice-president of BridgeHead Software, told CRN that interest in data archival is growing across the board.
“Broadly speaking, resellers could make more sales by using disaster recovery as their opening conversation point with a customer,” he said. “Data growth is being fuelled by many factors, such as a drop in the price of disk, but tape’s popularity still represents a sizeable opportunity for the channel.”
In the UK, the popularity of disk storage as an archival medium remained unchanged at 48 per cent, compared to 2005’s results, while optical storage increased by four per cent to 26 per cent.
Primary storage data volumes grew to a total of over five terabytes, according to seven per cent of respondents, however the same percentage reported a drop in data volumes to below five terabytes.
Ian Morris, cofounder of virtual distributor VADition, told CRN: “A VAR basing their data archival technology sales on compliance is using an ultimately flawed technique. Compliance is an additional and subsequent benefit of data archival for some companies and will come secondary to archival for disaster recovery and data integrity.”
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