Backup and archiving need attention now

UK data archiving skills lag behind those of the USA, but UK companies feel more pressurised by regulations despite the perception that the US is more burdened in this respect. Those are chief among findings from identical surveys conducted in the UK and the USA by BridgeHead Software. It also finds that users in both countries are not as clear as they should be about the differences between backup and archiving. In this country, 28% of companies do not archive data, compared to 23% in the US – and in the UK, 25% of those that do archive use an automated tool, rising to 32% in the US. More worrying: in the UK, 15% of respondents didn’t know how long it would take them to retrieve a vital file lost three months ago, compared to 20% in the USA. 48% of UK respondents say that business continuity and disaster recovery is a driver for archiving (40% in the US) but – despite making backups/restores faster and simpler by reducing the size of data stores – archiving, according to the survey, is not the answer to data protection. BridgeHead CEO Tony Cotterill says: “While there are interesting differences between the two markets, there are also worrying similarities – notably the confusion over the different functions, execution and purposes of backup and archiving. “Too many respondents in both countries are using backup software to create archives, which just isn’t appropriate. An archive involves indexing content so it can be retrieved later using a keyword search, anything else is just backup.” The fact that business continuity and disaster recovery heads the list of drivers for archiving in both countries reinforces the conclusion that many people are confused, he observes.