FINDINGS OF THEORIGINA DATA STORAGE

SURVEY& ANALYSIS

IN IRELAND

Table of Contents

Introduction .............................................................................................. 3Executive Summary .................................................................................. 4Research Methodology .......................................................................... 5Do you know how much data is stored within your storageinfrastructure? ........................................................................................... 6Do you know how much of your storage is consumed bybackup copies, duplication, or personal user files? ............................ 7By how much does your storage requirements grow yearon-year? ......................................................................................................... 8Do you have an effective solution which audits, tracks andprevents important data from leaving your organisation? ................ 9When was the last time the majority of your data wasmodified? ................................................................................................. 10How much of your IT budget goes on storage spend? ...................... 12Do you have a data management strategy which manages data from its creation, through the various tiers, until deletion after a specified amount of time based on compliance? ............................ 13What concerns you the most about data storage services?............ 14Does your company have a disaster recovery strategy?................... 15How long would it take your company to recover data inthe event of a disaster? .......................................................................... 16Do your backups overrun their allocated time window? ................... 17Do you know how long you are allowed to retain your datafor? ............................................................................................................ 19Do you employ an efficient data archiving solution for yourunstructured, database or email systems? ........................................... 20

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Introduction

This report was conducted and compiled by Origina.

Origina is a leading IT managed services & outsourcing company. Established in 1998, we provide innovative IT solutions to public & private organisations in various sectors within Ireland, UK, mainland Europe and the USA.

Our highly certified IT professionals are some of the best people in the industry and specialise in the world’s leading hardware and software platforms. Our unique innovative approach and industry thought challenging leadership – Origina Thinking! - has seen us win numerous high profile awards including the 2010 European IT Excellence Award, ‘SMB Solutions Provider of the Year.’

At Origina, our daily mission is to make IT the Hero for our clients through Innovation, Dedication and Teaming with them to deliver:

• World class independent advice• Tailored IT solutions• Cost-effective IT managed services

Our vision is to be internationally recognised as an industry challenging thought leader in creating bold ideas that drive real value from IT.

Twitter hashtag for this report is: #OriginaDR

Connect with Origina!

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Executive Summary

• 38% of the respondents did not know how much data is stored within their organisation• 65% of organisations do not have an insight into the type of data they have within their infrastructure.• 45% of respondents report a 20% year-on-year growth on storage requirements• 29.5% of respondents allow anyone to copy data freely within their organisations• 48% of respondents still currently use a reactive model in which portable storage devices are locked down, or access control security controls are put in place to control who has access to the data.• 56% of respondent’s data has not been modified in 30 days or more• 26.4% do not know the last time their data was modified• Nearly 10% of Irish organisations today spend over 50% of their budget on storage• 55% of organisations continue to manage storage growth by adding additional storage capacity, giving rise to an increased risk to the business in terms of availability, data loss, the speed at which a disaster recovery can be realised and storage costs.• Security is the most important issue for organisations when it comes to storage services scoring 62% in our survey• 13% of organisations do not have a defined disaster recovery strategy that protects their business in the event of a disaster• It would take 37.8% of respondents a day or more to recover data in the event of a disaster• 19.3% of respondents backup overrun their allocated time window• 37% of respondents do not know how long they are allowed to retain their data• 37.8% of respondents do not employ efficient data archiving solution for their unstructured, database or email systems

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Research Methodology

The quantitative survey was carried out in September 2010. The survey was conducted online by questionnaire using the following mediums: email, Twitter, LinkedIn, newsletters and the Origina blog. There were over 140 respondents, majority of which were based in Ireland.

Respondents were made up of:

• CIOs• IT Directors• IT Managers• Senior IT Consultants• Network/ Systems administrators

The purpose of this report was to discover the level of understanding businesses had about the data they stored, how they stored it and if they knew what type of data was stored.

Origina chose to measure this by quantitative means for the following reasons:

• Data is easier to collect from high level executives as the process is less time consuming• Results are easy to summarise and analyse • The results are statistically reliable.

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Do you know how much data is stored within your storage infrastructure?

A surprising 38% of the respondents did not have a clear view of how much data was being stored within their organisation. Data is comprised in different forms; examples are customer records & personal details, intellectual property (designs, concepts etc), database backups etc.

This lack of knowledge could also indicate that there is no insight as to how much of the current storage is being used to store non-valuable data such as database dumps, duplicated file copies etc. Our experience has shown that in some cases, this could account for over 20% of useable capacity.

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Do you know how much of your storage is consumed by backup copies, duplication, or personal user files?

Every organisation stores different types of data in different repositories. A healthcare institution might store large amounts of MRI images for medical diagnosis; a financial institution will hold a lot of transactional data from customer accounts in databases etc. The advancement of office workplace collaboration technology has fuelled the growth in data, but also the number of copies of files.

Personal storage is an area, which can give rise to compliance and legal risk if the data being stored within your organisation is of an illegal nature, and is proving to be one of the most challenging areas for organisations to manage. Failure to control and scan data adequately coming into the environment also poses an element of risk, as malicious code/software could be used to gain access to sensitive information. Database dumps & clones being stored on disk are also more prevalent today for faster recovery, and consume a lot of expensive primary storage.

With over 65% of organisations not having the insight to identify what type of data is being stored within their organisation it demonstrates a clear call to invest in a data profiling solution or a storage resource management tool to better manage storage growth. 7

By how much does your storage requirements grow year-on-year?

Depending on which Industry analyst you believe, storage is predicted to grow by between 500-650% over the next 4/5 years. With the majority of respondents quoting a 20% year-on-year growth, Ireland lags behind the international industry average, which is 45% year-on-year. In the US alone, text messages account for the generation of over 400TB a day!

If you take into account the results from the previous questions, one could argue that the answers given were an estimation of growth as no real metrics were available to accurately show how much the data estate has being growing over the last few years.

8

Do you have an effective solution which audits, tracks and prevents important data from leaving your organisation?

In today’s world, data can be freely transported and transmitted outside of the security perimeter, and this is evident from a recent US survey that showed that 59% of employees have reported taking company data when they left their employment.

With the average cost of a security breach running at nearly €10 million, it’s surprising to see that only 11% of respondents have employed a pro-active data protection solution which controls who has access to sensitive data that is being stored and how it can be accessed, transmitted etc. What is even more worrying is that 30% of organisations have no data protection control policies in place!

48% of respondents still currently use a reactive model in which portable storage devices are locked down, or access control security controls are put in place to control who has access to the data. Over the course of the year, we have seen the UK data regulator get tougher on breaches of data with large fines. The Irish Data Protection Commissioner now beginning to follow suit in implementing tougher fines for those that do not take a measured, effective and pro-active role in ensuring that data is not lost or leaked outside of its control.

• No, anyone can copy data freely 29.5%• Yes, we lock down access via Access Control Lists 27.9%• Yes, we lock down USB access 18.6%• Yes, we have a content protection mechanisms in place prventing emailing, copying etc 10.9%• I don’t know 8.5%• Yes, we lock down using an alternative method 4.7%

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When was the last time the majority of your data was modified?

According to industry average, approximately 80% of stored data is more than 30 days old, yet organisations continue to store this on the most expensive disk within the IT Infrastructure. Some of this data may still have a value to the business, for example: it might be patient records, contracts, and/or historical financial data. However, what percentage of this data has no value to the business at all?

Our experience has shown that unstructured data growth accounts for about 80% of overall data growth. Most organisations refrain from deleting or cleansing stored data because of the disconnect between the IT department and the application/business units.

The IT departments are tasked with ensuring that all of the data storage services operate normally and provide a good service, but they do not own the data and cannot make a call in isolation as to what data can be deleted and what needs to be kept. It is for this reason that data is “hoarded” and kept online indefinitely.

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When was the last time the majority of your data was modified? (Continued)

Today, organisations are beginning to realise that this practice is unsustainable into the future and that a more cost-effective, holistic solution is required in order to manage storage growth.

Origina’s Storage Benchmarking services were specifically designed to show customers how storage was being consumed within their organisation, and to develop a strategy to regain control of future storage growth.

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How much of your IT budget goes on storage spend?

Most of our clients tend to spend about 80c from every €1 managing existing IT infrastructures. With the continued increase in data being stored, the amount of budget to manage the infrastructure appears to be actually decreasing. With this continued decreased in available budget, it is interesting to note that nearly 10% of Irish organisations today spend over 50% of their budget on storage.

Taking advantage of technologies such as Thin Provisioning, DeDuplication and Automated Tiered Storage can immediately help customers reclaim existing storage capacity and help manage current storage volumes with reduced storage spend and complexity.

Origina is a leading provider of world-class data management solutions from leading vendors including Compellent, Quantum, Symantec, IBM and Exagrid.Origina also provide cost-effective “Utility” and “Cloud” based storage solutions that operate on an OPEX model to allow client organisations to avail of storage services in a more attractive and cost-effective model.

12

Do you have a data management strategy which manages data from its creation, through the various tiers, until deletion after a specified amount of time based on compliance?

54.5% of organisations continue to manage storage growth by adding additional storage capacity, giving rise to an increased risk to the business in terms of availability, data loss, the speed at which a disaster recovery can be realised and storage costs. If you take industry statistics that show 80% of this data is inactive – that means that for many organisations 80% of the data that they are storing could have little or no requirement to be recovered during an outage – which could mean a 400% increase in time to complete a DR recovery.

Having a sound data management strategy that manages data from inception to disposal is key to effecting the most cost-effective and risk-free solution for your organisation.

13

What concerns you the most about data storage services?

With the continued growth in stored data and the new industry “Cloud” based storage offerings; it is not surprising to see that security is the single most important issue for organisations when it comes to storage services scoring 62% in our survey. Even more interesting is the fact that industrial compliance is the lowest of all recorded answers scoring only 14%.

The relative high response to Data Protection Legislation is attributable to recent action by the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland drafting new rules governing the storing of data assets and the fines for any reported data breaches/losses reported.

The cost of managing storage growth (42%) and acquiring storage hardware (37%) is reflective of current market trends where customers are looking at storage purchases as the last resort, and are favouring the investment into data profiling & analysis in order to fully understand how they are consuming storage resources today. The increase of new vendors in the storage market with a more attractive balance of virtualisation technologies and ease of use has sent a clear message to traditional larger storage players that customers are looking for cost-effective storage solutions that help better manage storage growth.

(Respondents were asked to tick one or more of the answers as appropriate).

• In-house skills to manage data 42.1% • Expensive Storage Systems 36.4%• Virtualisation & Cloud technology 19.8% • Data Protection Legislation 38.8% • Industry Compliance 14.0% • Security 62.0%

14

Does your company have a disaster recovery strategy?

It is surprising to see that even today, 13% of organisations do not have a defined disaster recovery strategy that protects their business in the event of a disaster. Industry statistics have shown that over 40% of all SMBs will go out of business if they cannot get to their data in the first 24 hours after a crisis (Gartner).

Our own experience has shown that the majority of organisations with a defined disaster recovery strategy still do not test their recoveries on a regular basis. A simulated DR test should take at least twice per year. During these simulated tests, the majority of failures can be attributable to failures in integrating the daily change management system and the DR plan.

15

How long would it take your company to recover data in the event of a disaster?

• >1 Hour 6.7% • 1-4 Hours 29.4% • >1 Day 18.5% • 1-5 Days 31.9% • 5 Days or more 5.9% • I don't know 7.6%

When it comes to disaster recovery, there are two widely discussed terms – the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and the Recovery Point Objective).

The Recovery Time Objective defines the amount of elapsed time taken to affect a full recovery of all applications and systems in getting the business back in to an operational state. The Recovery Point Objective describes the acceptable amount of data loss for the organisation measured in time. The Recovery Point Objective is the point in time that you must recover as defined by your organisation.

Traditionally, recovering data with a very low RTO and RPO time required substantial investment in; however, with the increase in more cost-effective technologies such as iSCSI and FCP-to-IP converters, long-distance replication is now available as a viable alternative to tape backup to allow a much faster recovery. It is still interesting to note however that of over half of the organisations surveyed still take over 24 hours to recover their systems.

16

Do your backups overrun their allocated time window?

Almost one fifth of backups overrun their allocated time. The majority of backup environments that exist today were sized based on a smaller volume of stored data. Our experience has shown that the pressure of increased data volumes has had an adverse effect on backup windows and operational costs. Some organisations have managed this growth by being selective in what systems are being backed up, opting for more incremental based jobs or investing in newer de-dupe technology to help manage the storage growth. Over one fifth of the respondents cited that their backup windows overrun their allocated time to some degree, which introduces additional risk to the organisation, and potentially affects the service levels to their customers.

While de-dupe technologies are a great for reducing backup windows and increasing the speed and recovery of data backups – they do not fix the problem – they merely mask it.

Those organisations experiencing backup overruns should review what data is being backed up and align this to the SLAs defined with the business for the protection of those systems.

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Do your backups overrun their allocated time window? (Continued)

A review of how the current storage assets are being utilised should also be undertaken to identify quick wins in order to reduce the backup window.

Most organisations still employ LAN-based backups without taking advantage of SAN technology. By balancing backup data over the SAN and LAN will increased the amount of bandwidth for those systems with large volumes of data and free up much needed LAN bandwidth for the remaining systems. All of this can happen in parallel resulting in a reduction of the backup window and an optimised backup environment.

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Do you know how long you are allowed to retain your data for?

Surprisingly, 37% of organisations who responded do not have a clear directive as to how long data should be retained for their organisation. The typical response to this lack of direction is to store all data indefinitely in an online format in case it is required in future for legal/compliance purposes.

Our experience has shown that this policy of storing data indefinitely can introduce a number of problems including a never-ending demand for more storage, lengthy backup procedures, a higher risk of litigation, and wasted time trying to discover and track down data. It is safe to assume that those organisations that responded stating that over 50% of their storage budget is spent on managing storage are experiencing some, if not all of these issues today. Furthermore, we have found that the lack of adopting such a data management plan was attributable the perception that it would cost too much money, no-one having direct responsibility for leading such a strategy internally, or there were was no such expertise within the organisation.

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Do you employ an efficient data archiving solution for your unstructured, database or email systems?

With research, showing that over 75% of a company’s intellectual property is contained within email and messaging systems alone, the need for a secure, compliant and easy to retrieve archival repository is crucial.

Today, emails are also used to conduct more sensitive and commercially valuable transactions for organisations. Emails today have become the electronic substitutes of legal business documentation. Consequently, such correspondence in and out of an organisation must be retained for a minimum period of time to comply with external regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIIPA etc.

Nearly all organisations today involved in regular business activities can become involved in legal lawsuits. The retrieval of information, which is relevant to a case, can be colossal for an organisation, and can often outweigh the damages being sought. As an example, the cost for restoring 77 backup tapes in the case Zubulake vs. Warbung (USB Bank) amounted to $165,954 and the relative costs totalled to $107,694.

Having data stored in a secure consolidated archival vault is one thing, but how easy to access and query that data is the key factor with any archival system.

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Do you employ an efficient data archiving solution for your unstructured, database or email systems?(Continued)

It is interesting to see that 38% of organisations today in Ireland do not have any form of data archiving in place to protect their organisation. Accidental or malicious deletion of documents or records in these organisations could go unnoticed creating a substantial exposure for the organisation.

Origina helps organisations identify the most appropriate data archiving solution for their business needs and partners with Symantec, IBM and CommVault in delivering world-class solutions.

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About Origina

For more information visitwww.origina.com or call 01- 2942 300

Origina is one of Ireland’s leading IT consulting, services and outsourcing companies, with more than 40 people in its Dublin and London offices. Established in 1998, it works with government and commercial customers in Ireland, UK, mainland Europe, Caribbean and United States.

Origina’s highly certified IT professionals specialise in some of the world’s leading hardware and software platforms. Origina’s innovative approach – Origina Thinking! - has seen it win numerous high profile awards including the 2010 European IT Excellence Award, ‘SMB Solutions Provider of the Year.’ Its core philosophy is challenging and visionary.

© 2010 Origina Ltd. Unauthorised use or sharing of this document is strictly forbidden.