Continuous Data Protection Driven by Recovery and Compliance Requirements

Practically unheard of two years ago, continuous data protection CDP- is considered a hot technology by a large number of IT managers today. Thirty-four percent of the 2,000 surveyed IT managers are using a CDP or near-CDP system today for part of their data, and 23 percent plan to acquire one in the next 18 months. In addition, half of today s CDP users will upgrade to a better system in 2006.

Of the population, 19 percent feels they are very familiar with the CDP concept, and an additional 50 percent say they are somewhat familiar. That represents a major rise in the awareness of the benefits of CDP, when compared to other surveys performed in the past six months. Tighter legislations on data retention and recovery have contributed in elevating data protection to the top of the IT managers concerns. Thirty-seven percent of the surveyed population rank data protection highest among their storage management challenges to these users, CDP comes as a savior. It is about to revolutionize the very notion of backup and recovery, and constitutes a major step towards achieving seamless business continuity. However most users continue to perform periodic full backups, not fully trusting the new technology. The population aiming at RTO and RPO of less than 20 minutes has doubled since 2004. The survey shows that improving the recovery time objective RTO- is the major incentive for CDP acquisition. Liability and compliance is the second major incentive, cited by 29 percent of the respondents. The survey addressed a random population of 15,000 sites. 2,000 reliable responses form the basis of preliminary findings covering storage configurations and objectives. For a selected population of over 100 IT professionals, this report provides statistics on backup practices, ranks issues and needs, and analyzes CDP trends and plans. Source: www.dmreview.coma>