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).
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.