IT challenges with managing increasing amounts of data
Half of all organizations EVault surveyed in the USA, UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands say they are managing more data now than they were a year ago, and 70 percent of those same organizations expect that the volumes of data they manage will only continue to climb.
Faced with these realities, the survey found that within the group of IT leaders not currently benefiting from a hybrid (onsite and offsite) data protection environment, more than 60 percent are either planning or considering one. Cloud backup and storage, a key component of hybrid environments, is now seen as an important way to manage the ever-increasing volumes of data.
66 percent of IT people surveyed said their organizations will increase the amount of data they store in the cloud by 2015. The US is most bullish about storing data in the cloud, with 85 percent of American IT leaders responding they would increase cloud usage in the next few years.
Within organizations already benefiting from a hybrid data protection environment, 74 percent report they needed the increased flexibility a hybrid approach brings to their data management infrastructure, which becomes more and more important as data volumes increase.
Improved data security was why 66 percent moved from their old backup and recovery tools to an onsite and offsite data protection solution. 57 percent of all IT leaders surveyed prefer their hybrid solution because their rapidly growing business critical data requires protection against natural disaster and theft.
While year-over-year and country-by-country figures of employees storing company data on their phones held steady at 22 percent (in the US it is up to 32 percent), an overwhelming majority of IT leaders — 94 percent — have concerns about the mix of personal and corporate data used by employees on their own mobile devices.
7 percent of IT leaders surveyed expressed concerns about the retention and security of their data, and its possible deletion from a mobile device. Meanwhile, an additional 57 percent highlighted worries about the legal issues that could stem from the BYOD (bring your own device) trend.
IT leaders in this study are just starting to address the issue. While almost all of the organizations surveyed – 96 percent – have at least some employees who have mobile devices they use for work, and 24 percent of IT leaders themselves admit to having lost data from a mobile device, only 28 percent of organizations surveyed currently have a disaster recovery plan which includes mobile devices.
IT appears ready to start addressing this problem, with a large number of respondents believing they would benefit from implementing some policy controls. For example, 55 percent of those surveyed believe their organization would benefit from administrative controls enabling the ability to delete data from any mobile device possessing company data.