Virtualization, cloud, and mobility are the key to better disaster preparedness

According to a recent Symantec survey, improving disaster recovery for small and medium-sized businesses plays a major role in adopting new technologies.

Symantec announced a 2012 disaster preparedness survey of small and medium-sized businesses that revealed that the effectiveness of disaster preparedness is related to the openness of SMEs to the use of new technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing and mobility. Research has shown how acceptable SMEs are to these technologies, which are often used for better disaster preparedness, and how cost-effective it is for them.

“Today, small and medium-sized businesses are in a special position where new technologies not only give them an advantage over their competitors, but also allow them to protect critical information for which the entire enterprise has access, while improving new disaster recovery capabilities. build. SMEs cannot afford long downtimes, so it is key to be able to recover their IT systems quickly after a disaster. Technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing and mobility, complemented by comprehensive security and data protection solutions, allow them to be better prepared for rapid recovery in the event of a potential disaster, such as floods or fire, loss or theft of mobile devices and laptops. Said András Pulai, Symantec's chief systems engineer.

Review and test disaster recovery capability: It is necessary to make sure you have adequate backup and backup capabilities at least once a quarter.

The survey pointed to the following trends:
Virtualization, cloud computing and mobility are a growing driving force: Not only are large companies interested in increasingly advanced technologies, but a significant number of SMEs are also taking advantage of these innovations. More than two-thirds (35 percent) also reap the benefits of mobile devices in business. Virtualization is also becoming more widespread, with 34 percent of SMEs either deploying or already using server virtualization. Cloud computing is still the most popular, with 40 percent of businesses deploying public cloud, and a similar proportion deploying private clouds (43 percent). 
Improving disaster recovery is one of the main reasons: In many cases, the pursuit of improving disaster recovery plays a crucial role in the application of new technologies. For private cloud, 37 percent of SMEs admitted that disaster recovery influenced their decision, and 34 percent said it had an impact when using public cloud and server virtualization. This is also true for mobility, with disaster recovery being a decisive factor in 36 percent of cases. 
Early Detectors Have Better Disaster Response Capabilities: Whether planned or not, adoption of technology initiatives has improved disaster preparedness for the majority of respondents, particularly server virtualization - 71 percent reported that virtualization has improved disaster recovery. Improvements were also seen for both private and public cloud, at 43 and 41 percent, respectively. And mobility improved disaster recovery capacity in 36 percent of respondents. 

Symantec recommends the following actions:

Start planning now: Start developing a disaster recovery plan today. Evaluate how strategic technologies such as mobile, virtualization, and cloud can help with these efforts.
Use strategic technologies: Deploy integrated cloud backup for remote storage and disaster recovery, and automated physical-to-virtual (P2V) backup so you can restore your physical system to a virtual machine in the event of a server failure. 
Protect your information: Use complete security and backup solutions to protect your physical, virtual, and mobile systems. 
Check and test for disaster preparedness: Recommended at least once a quarter.

Source: Press release