Downtime Cost per Hour Has Risen 65% in Past Two Years;
Industry Experts Believe Middle East is Increasingly Prone but Responding Well to Challenge
A spate of high-profile cyber attacks in the Middle East and the rising costs of IT downtime are creating the biggest demand yet for high availability (HA) solutions and robust data protection measures, according to industry experts.
According to business intelligence research experts Aberdeen Group, the cost per hour of downtime increased 65% from $100,000 in 2010 to $165,000 in 2012.
Furthermore, Symantec’s 2012 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey notes that globally the median cost of downtime for an SMB is $12,500 per day.
“In today’s relentless 24/7 global economy, businesses can no longer afford even minimal periods of downtime,” said Andrew Calthorpe, Chief Executive Officer, Condo Protego, one of the Middle East’s foremost turnkey data storage solutions providers and value-added resellers.
Calthorpe believes that the challenge of maintaining optimal data availability at all times is greater than ever before, particularly in the Middle East, and it is clear that those businesses that are slow to adapt to these trends will fall by the wayside.
“A lack of a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan can prove disastrous for data integrity, time, revenue, productivity and overall brand reputation – if you are out of the game, rest assured a competitor will step in,” he explained.
“Thankfully, business leaders in the region are waking up to the nature and magnitude of the problem, and world-class recovery plans are well on their way to becoming the norm.”
Downtime is on the rise globally, according to Symantec’s 2012 State of the Data Centeri report which reveals that 70 percent of organizations experience downtime from power failure (11.3 hours per outage), while 63 percent endure cyber-attacks (52.7 hours per outage). The median downtime per outage in the last 12 months was 5 hours, and organizations experienced an average of 4 downtime incidents during the same period.
Symantec also found that 79 percent of organizations reported increasing complexity in the data center. According to another Symantec study – ‘2012 State of Information Surveyii’ – the world has to contend with 2.2 zettabytes of business data, which has a $1.1 trillion price tag to store and secure.
“As today’s businesses generate more information and introduce new technologies into the data center, these changes can either act as a sail to catch the wind and accelerate growth, or an anchor holding organizations back,” said Ramzi Itani, Channel Director, Middle East and French-speaking Africa at Symantec. “The difference is up to those organizations, which can meet the challenges head on by implementing effective disaster recovery and business continuity plans to keep information from becoming a liability.”
Symantec’s suite of data availability offerings includes NetBackup, Enterprise Vault, Storage FoundationHA and Disaster Recovery (DR), Volume Replicator, Cluster Server, and BackupExec. While these solutions offer excellent performance, their exact configuration can vary wildly from business to business. This is where value added resellers like Condo Protego come in.
Highly regarded by its customers for a consultative approach and comprehensive postsales support, Condo Protego has considerable capabilities in delivering Symantec offerings. In 2011, Condo Protego achieved Master Specialization in all four Availability specialization areas, namely Archiving and e-Discovery, Storage Management, Data Protection Plus and High Availability. Condo Protego was the first partner in the region to have passed the rigorous quality control processes and trainings to achieve Master Specialization and currently is the only partner in the United Arab Emirates that has achieved Master Specialization.
Symantec Master Specializations recognize partners who exhibit consultative and technical support expertise. Through these specializations, Condo Protego is well positioned to meet the evolving professional services needs of its customers and to provide its customers with a broad range of flexible service offerings on Symantec’s product portfolio.
“The Master Specialisation showcases Condo Protego’s expertise and proficiency in Symantec’s data protection, archiving, e-discovery and high availability solutions and services,” added Itani. “With these Master Specialisations, Condo Protego has exhibited a deep investment in Symantec, and we are committed to providing our Master Specialists with products and services that help them differentiate from the competition and accelerate revenue.”
Using Symantec products Condo Protego has helped numerous local enterprise-class customers safeguard against disruptive downtime with data availability solution projects across the banking, insurance, education, energy, manufacturing, energy and government sectors.
i Symantec State of Data Center Report, survey conducted with organizations across the globe in 2012
ii Symantec State of Information Report, survey conducted with organizations across the globe in 2012
