Information is a critical corporate asset and the lifeblood of most organizations. The rapid rate of change within IT means that more data is generated on a daily basis than ever before. New applications enable new opportunities for improved efficiencies and innovation. Yet, there is a disconnect. While IT systems push forward, the backup technology to protect the systems is often dated and designed for an IT environment of the past.

EMC wanted to understand the real causes of business interruption currently facing companies in the Middle East, Turkey and Morocco, and to measure the impact of systems downtime and data loss. We sought to identify how well prepared for disruption companies feel they are– whether that disruption takes the form of common IT failures or more serious disasters. To get some answers, we commissioned research agency, Vanson Bourne, to speak to 1,000 IT decision makers across the region from a range of industries in both the public and private sectors. The reality is that the vast majority of companies aren’t very confident that they can recover their IT systems and most have suffered systems downtime and data loss in the last 12 months.

Some of the key findings:

• 82% of organizations are not very confident that they can fully recover after a disaster
• 64% surveyed have lost data and/or suffered systems downtime in the last year
• 55% report hardware failure as the primary cause of data loss and downtime; software failure and security beaches are the next most-important causes
• 43% of organizations cite loss of employee productivity as the single biggest economic impact
• 52% organizations rely on backup tapes to recover after a disaster.
• 73% of organizations using tape for backup and recovery want to replace it. Faster backups (55%), increased security (39%) and speed of data recovery and systems restore (36%) were cited as the top reasons to replace tape

Visit the following sites for findings from Europe and South Africa:

• Link to Europe
• Link to South Africa