Practically unheard of two years ago, Continuous Data protection (CDP) is considered a hot technology by a large number of IT managers today. 34% of the 2,000 surveyed IT managers are using a CDP or near-CDP system today for part of their data, and 23% plan to acquire one in the next 18 months. In addition, half of today's CDP users will upgrade to a better system in 2006.
19% of the population feels they are very familiar with the CDP concept, and an additional 50% say they are somewhat familiar. That represents a major rise in the awareness of the benefits of CDP, when compared to other surveys performed in the past six months.
Tighter legislations on data retention and recovery have contributed to elevating data protection to the top of the IT managers concerns. 37% of the surveyed population rank data protection highest among their storage management challenges, to these users CDP comes as a savior. It is about to revolutionize the very notion of backup and recovery, and constitutes a major step towards achieving seamless business continuity. However most users continue to perform periodic full backups, not fully trusting the new technology.
The population aiming at RTO and RPO of less than 20 minutes has doubled since 2004.The survey shows that improving the recovery time objective (RTO) is the major incentive for CDP acquisition. Liability and compliance is the second major incentive, cited by 29% of the respondents.
The survey addressed a random population of 15,000 sites. 2,000 reliable responses form the basis of preliminary findings covering storage configurations and objectives. For a selected population of over 100 IT professionals, this report provides statistics on backup practices, ranks issues and needs, and analyzes CDP trends and plans.
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Introduction
The survey targeted over one hundred IT managers having storage management or data protection responsibilities for IT operations that store a minimum of one terabyte (TB) of raw disk storage. Out of 15,000 managers contacted, over 2,000 qualified managers (Referred to as the “Screening Survey”) answered the full screening survey of less than 10 questions. We selected over two hundred individuals representing sites relatively evenly distributed among the disk capacity ranges, with an attempt to include a sufficient number of representatives from each of nine targeted industries. We submitted them to the full survey of over 50 questions. We received 135 reliable responses. They are referred to as the “Full Survey” or “Selected population”.
The Screening Survey population was questioned on their storage configuration as well as their acquisition plans. For the selected population of 135 sites, this survey provides statistics on practices related to Automated Tiered Storage and media used for different storage tiers The report ranks issues and needs, and analyzes trends and acquisition intents.
Nine industries were targeted in this report: Finance/banking, Health, Manufacturing, Retail Distribution, Government, Education, Consulting, Computers and IT, and Telecommunications. The survey reveals interesting peculiarities in each industry practices and requirements.
Objective of the Report
The primary objective of this study is to determine the acceptance of the concept of Continuous Data Protection, as well as user requirements and complaints.
Survey Methodology
To qualify for the survey, the respondent had to be an IT administrator or manager with storage related responsibilities and one terabyte of total disk capacity most of which connected to open systems.
· We developed a questionnaire in collaboration with a number of industry executives · We tested the questionnaire in interviews with industry experts and storage vendors · We asked several thousands IT managers a limited set of questions to determine if they qualified for the survey. Over 2000 completed these questions. · We selected about 200 of these screening survey respondents to complete the full survey. We targeted 70% of the population in the small and medium business category with the full survey respondents having mostly open systems and 3 or more NAS. · We sent a detailed questionnaire of over 50 questions to the selected respondents · We received over 130 good responses. We compiled and analyzed the results, and compared with results obtained in our 2003 and 2004 surveys · We also included comments resulting from the many contacts we have throughout the year with IT managers.
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