There is a significant disconnect between information technology (IT) and business executives when it comes to disaster recovery preparedness, according to the results of a new State of Disaster Recovery survey. While both sets of executives share same views on the importance of information availability to the business, survey data reveal a split in how to achieve the goal of minimizing downtime when an unplanned IT outage occurs.
In the survey commissioned by SunGard Availability Services and conducted by Harris Interactive(R), both IT and business decision-makers say information availability is important to the success of their business (83 percent of IT, 78 percent of business). However, fewer than half of business executives say disaster recovery and business continuity are important to business success compared with a large majority of IT executives (74 percent of IT, 49 percent of business).
The lack of business understanding about the value of disaster recovery is clearly exhibited in executive views on funding levels. IT decision-makers were significantly more likely to say insufficient funding is among the biggest obstacles they face in developing an effective disaster recovery plan for their companies (42 percent of IT to 32 percent of business).
IT executives were also more likely to say they have inadequate resources (25 percent of IT to 11 percent of business) to make disaster recovery plans effective -- and believe investing in disaster recovery and business continuity are more important in the current economy because their companies can't afford the risk of any unexpected downtime (33 percent of IT to 18 percent of business).
The gap in support for funding disaster preparedness may be the result of business decision-makers being less knowledgeable about their company's disaster recovery plans. For example, business executives were significantly more likely to say they are unsure as to how frequently their firm's disaster recovery plans are tested (30 percent compared to 5 percent of IT) or what their plan includes (41 percent compared to 4 percent of IT).
Despite insufficient funding being the biggest challenge companies face in developing an effective recovery plan, just one-fifth of respondents (17 percent of IT, 19 percent of business) say their company currently uses a third-party provider to manage disaster recovery systems. But more than half of the survey respondents that use a third-party disaster recovery offering believe those offerings are more cost effective and provide better solutions.
Contributing to the stress on IT operations is the pressure to keep unplanned IT downtime at low levels. About two-thirds (66 percent) of IT executives say the amount of downtime tolerated has grown shorter over the last two years. About 50 percent (54 percent) of IT decision-makers report their organizations can tolerate downtime of only five hours or less.
When asked to give their company a letter grade on their company's ability to access business-critical information after an unplanned outage, 30 percent of IT executives chose a "C" or "D" -- which compares to only 22 percent selecting those grades in the survey done in 2007.
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