Increasingly, users are demanding 24x7 access to all applications and data, and have no patience for downtime. CIOs are responsible for delivering a seamless, an ‘always-on user experience.
But according to the 2016 Veeam Availability Report, this is not happening.
Veeam says it surveyed 1,140 IT decision makers and CIOs across 24 countries (including 30 respondents from Australia and New Zealand) and found 84 per cent of CIOs admit they cannot deliver what users demand.
"They have an 'availability gap'," says Don Williams, vice president, ANZ, Veeam Software. "This is 2 per cent on the last study."
The report likewise finds downtime costs enterprises up to $16 million per year, up by $6 million in 12 months.
When choosing an availability solution, CIOs demand high-speed recovery (59 per cent of respondents) and data loss avoidance (57 per cent of respondents).
Downtime costs enterprises up to $16 million per year, up by $6 million in 12 months.
Read more: How to build a change capable organisation
Fundamentally, the report shows ANZ businesses are struggling to deliver on the needs of the always-on enterprise, reports Williams.
There has been an increase in the average number of downtime events reported in ANZ from 10 in 2014 to 13 in 2015, reports Williams.
Internationally, the average length of each downtime event has also increased (from less than 1.5 hours to almost two hours for mission-critical applications).
Read more: PMOs should evolve to support bimodal IT and digital business: Gartner
Across ANZ , the majority (70 per cent) have reported that the key drivers for minimising application downtime and guaranteeing access to data are more frequent real-time interactions between a company's customers, partners, suppliers and employees. Globally this figure is lower (63 per cent).
Furthermore, up to 97 per cent of ANZ businesses (compared with 84 per cent globally) either agree or strongly agree that they have an availability gap and are not achieving the Service Level Agreements for RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective) required to close this gap.
“Customers are looking for RTPOs (recovery time and point objectives) of less than 15 minutes for all applications and data,” he states.
He concludes: “IT departments have to challenge legacy, status quo attitudes within the datacentre.
Read more: 5 key ingredients for building a high performing team
“Traditional backup and recovery solutions will take you so far, but they are not appropriate for the evolving digital business and are definitely not able to provide the 24x7x365 levels of immediacy reported in this study.”
Send news tips and comments to divina_paredes@idg.co.nz
Follow Divina Paredes on Twitter: @divinap
Sign up for CIO newsletters for regular updates on CIO news, views and events.
Join the CIO New Zealand group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, CDOs, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.
Join the CIO New Zealand group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.