Businesses take 12 hours to get up-and-running again using back-up tapes, says new research report from Connect

London, England

6^th February 2008

A new research report entitled ‘Risky Business, published today by Connect, the IT support company, reveals that businesses relying on back-up tapes to store and recover their data need on average 11.6 hours to get themselves up and running again.  5% of the businesses surveyed by Connect needed more than 3 days to get back online.  The survey also found that 1 in 10 SMEs had lost important data as a result of back-up failure

Mark Macgregor, Connect’s CEO said:

“These results make seriously scary reading for firms.  If any business is out of action for 12 hours, that could cause some serious damage to its reputation.  If the ‘blackout’ lasts three days it is likely to be catastrophic.”

Significant findings of the research include:

• 89% of firms are still using back-up tapes to store their data.  28% leave the tape in the office, 29% take them home and 32% give their tapes to a back-up tape company to store on their behalf;
• 10% of the SMEs surveyed by Connect had suffered a major data loss as a direct result of backup failure;
• There’s a 1 in 3 chance of firms experiencing a major server problem every 6 months;
• 7 out of 10 small to medium-sized enterprises have not tested their backup systems in the last 6 months;
• 32% of companies have never attempted to recover a single file;
• For companies with under 50 employees, 40% take their back-up tapes home with them each day and 26% just leave them in the office;
• Only 11% of the companies surveyed by Connect back up their data over the internet to a secure offsite data centre;

Mark MacGregor, continued:

“Back-up tapes have been around since the 1970s and any modern business should be seriously considering more up-to-date options.  Not only are they cumbersome, insecure and easily misplaced, the costs of better alternatives are falling fast.  What’s more, one of the major problems with using tapes is that they are often not treated with enough care – if you leave them in your office and there’s a fire or flood, you’ve lost both your original data and the backups.”

MacGregor adds:

“The other issue is speed.  Getting back working 12 hours after your system goes down should not be acceptable to any company, however large or small.   12 hours is certainly more than enough time to lose some business or do some serious damage to your reputation.  With recent advances in technology, we now recommend that our clients back up their files and documents to a secure offsite data centre.”

About Connect: Connect has been providing IT support to a range of small and mid sized companies since 1993. The company has grown rapidly and now has over 300 different clients across the and abroad. Connect provides a variety of IT services including helpdesk and on-site support, project management and business continuity. The company is based at Canary Wharf in London with on-site engineers based at different locations across the world.

Copies of Risky Business may be downloaded from www.connect.co.uk

Press / Media enquiries please contact:

Mark Houlding

PR Consultant to Connect

Rostrum Communications

mark@rostrumpr.com

020 7392 2632 / 07773 782 520