CUPERTINO, Calif. — Symantec Corp. released the global results of its fifth annual IT Disaster Recovery survey, which it said demonstrates rising DR pressures on organizations caused by soaring downtime costs and more stringent IT service level requirements to mitigate risk to the business.
The study also shows that while DR budgets are higher in 2009, they are expected to remain flat over the next few years.
Symantec said the survey highlights that while recovery time objectives were reduced to four hours in 2009, disaster recovery testing and virtualization still are major challenges for organizations. Respondents reported DR testing increasingly impacts customers and revenue, and one in four tests fail. Nearly a third of organizations don't test virtual environments as part of their disaster recovery plans, and a slightly larger percentage of virtual environments aren't regularly backed up-which the company said points to a need for more automation and cross-environment tools.
The average cost of executing/implementing disaster recovery plans for each downtime incident worldwide according to respondents is $287,600. In North America, the median cost can climb to as high as $900,000. In North America, the median cost for financial institutions is $650,000.
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