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The first stage of the survey concluded in November 2011 and elicited responses from 50 UK enterprise IT and storage managers at businesses that met or exceeded SEPATON’s criteria for large enterprises. The objective of the survey was to gauge real-world views of the greatest data backup and restore challenges currently facing large UK businesses today.

The survey results strongly reflect industry concerns over a perceived underestimation of the importance of a robust data protection strategy, as well as a general uncertainty over continuing abilities to meet ever more challenging backup windows by regularly improving data storage performance.

Key findings include:

An alarming 80% of enterprise data storage managers believe that senior management underestimates the importance of a data protection strategy, despite just 12% believing underfunding of data storage is preventing them meeting business requirements, and just 2% worried that a lack of funds is forcing them short of regulatory requirements

The greatest business challenges that data managers feel they need to overcome are: continuing to meet backup windows through faster performance (70%); better protection for business-critical applications (52%); higher levels of data security for stored or archived information (52%); and streamlining business processes in general (46%)

Of all the characteristics and skills that respondents felt were desirable in a great storage manager, experience understandably topped the list with 76%, while awareness of emerging technologies (62%), communications skills (54%) and attention to detail (54%) also score well. Conflict resolution wasn’t deemed particular important with just 14% making the skill a priority, while just 4% singled out a good work/life balance

Just 2% of data managers said it was easy to receive budget to fund new storage initiatives, with 38% claiming it was usually ok, 56% saying that it was sometimes possible, and a disconcerting 12% admitting it just wasn’t ever possible

“Both backup and restore performance are big issues for data storage managers working at UK’s largest enterprise businesses. The findings of a survey designed to uncover the challenges facing the people actually working at the data storage coalface were always going to prove revealing,” said Tim Butchart, vice president, SEPATON EMEA.

“Business datasets are growing ever larger and more unwieldy, making them impossible to protect thoroughly using tools that were built before the concept of backups of over 100TB even existed. That’s why it’s vital that strategies are formed around more innovative data protection platforms specifically developed to meet and address the challenges faced by large modern enterprises managing very large data backups and restores day-in and day-out.”