Third of IT Managers “Reasonably Confident” About DR Plan

An industry survey has revealed a worrying lack of attention is being paid to DR solutions by IT managers – with over a third (34%) admitting they are only reasonably confident that their DR solution would be successful in the event of an emergency.

The study, conducted by Timico Ltd, a business internet, hosting and communications service provider, showed that as many as one in eight of those surveyed had either never tested their DR plans or had no idea exactly when they were last tested. Only 9% said that they reviewed and updated recovery plans once a month or more.

Tom Moores, sales director for cloud and hosting, Timico, said: “IT managers are renowned for having a lot on their plate, but when things go wrong, there’s nowhere to hide. DR plans are effectively worthless if they are not tested, reviewed and updated as there is no way to guarantee whether the backup plan will pull through. From burst water pipes to natural disasters and simple human error, the threat of downtime is more likely than many people realise – which makes an unproven plan a huge risk.“

The news follows the recent launch of Timico’s DR as a Service (DRaaS) proposition, an affordable cloud-based solution to encourage businesses of all sizes to protect themselves from potentially damaging downtime.

Moores concluded: “DR is an essential component of IT management, but in the past it has always been seen as a bit of a headache, with businesses having to invest heavily in duplicate equipment before they could be 100% confident and conduct thorough testing. With DRaaS, testing can be conducted with no disruption to the production environment. Using our cloud platform as backup in the event of a major disruption, precious data is protected almost instantaneously until a business is ready to fail back to its primary site.“

As well as offering greater protection, efficiency and cost savings – DRaaS is also a pay-as-you-go solution, allowing customers to decide how many servers they wish to protect each month before paying a minimum monthly fee based on that quantity.