InformationWeek 2014 Backup
Technologies Survey
Research Findings
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Executive Summary
Plenty of technologies get more attention than backups, but not many are more important. When your main data center
is under water, you can either recover or you can't.
Among the 437 respondents to our InformationWeek Backup Technologies Survey, all of whom screened in by indicating
involvement with the selection, evaluation, or use of backup technologies, the No. 1 data protection challenge is the cost
of backup systems and procedures. Other data points:
>> 59% back up directly to tape, down from 66% in 2013.
>> 54% expect to still be backing up direct to tape in 18 months.
>> 41% do not encrypt removable media.
>> 11% have three or more different backup applications in use.
Respondent breakdown: 18% have 5,000 or more employees; 12% are over 10,000. Education, consulting, and
government are well-represented, and 40% are IT director/manager or IT executive management (C-level/VP level).
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Fewer got new backup applications in the last year
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Most use same backup system for physical/virtual servers
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One backup application is most common
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Most use conventional software to back up virtual servers
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Most back up physical servers weekly or more
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Most back up virtual servers weekly or more
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Reasons some users aren’t backing up weekly
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How much are you using different backup technologies?
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Which backup technologies are you using at all?
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Which backup technologies will you use most in 18 months?
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Which backup technologies do you expect to use at all?
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Most respondents like their backup system
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Likelihood of successful disaster recovery
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How long data is stored on non-removable media
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How long data is stored on removable media
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Cloud storage gains ground
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Less than a third encrypt backup tapes
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Types of data restored most often
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How often data is restored
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Symantec makes gains for VM infrastructure backups
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Software used for VM backups
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Problems with data protection
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How often respondents test backups
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How respondents back up remote office data
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How much data respondents protect
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How many physical servers respondents protect
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How many virtual servers respondents protect
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Survey respondents’ job titles
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Annual revenue of survey respondents’ employers
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Survey respondents’ industry
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Number of employees at survey respondents’ companies
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Research Synopsis
Survey Name InformationWeek 2014 Backup Technologies Survey
Survey Date
May 2014
Region North America
Number of Respondents
437
Purpose To explore the state of data backups today and interest in emerging technologies.
Methodology InformationWeek surveyed business technology decision-makers at North American companies. The
survey was conducted online, and respondents were recruited via an email invitation containing an embedded link to
the survey. The email invitation was sent to qualified InformationWeek subscribers.
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