Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 56 | Page 43

FEATURE: DISASTER RECOVERY AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY global organisations currently have is the lack of staff to work on new initiatives (42%), whereas in the Middle East and Africa, it is the lack of ability to support DevOps or AppDev (27%). • Over half (51%) of global respondents believe DX can help their organisation transform customer service. Almost half said it could transform business operations (48%) and deliver cost savings (47%). • Almost one-quarter (23%) of global organisations describe their progress towards achieving DX initiatives and goals as mature or fully implemented. • Almost a third (30%) of global organisations are currently in the early stages of implementing or planning DX. • 43% of regional respondents in Middle East and Africa said lack of IT staff skills or expertise is preventing or has prevented their organisation from moving forward with DX. Other barriers include dependency on legacy systems (40%); lack of buy-in from senior management (23%); limited budgets (29%) and lack of time (16%). • Over a third (39%) of global respondents said the ability to improve reliability of backups is the most likely reason to drive their organisation to change its primary backup solution. A total of 38% cited reduced software or hardware costs and 33% said improving return on investment. • Almost a quarter (23%) of global organisations’ data is replicated and made Business Continuity (BC)/DR capable via a cloud provider. Over a fifth (21%) of data across organisations globally is not replicated or staged for BC/DR • Over a quarter (27%) of global organisations’ data is backed up to the cloud by a Backup as a Service (BaaS) provider, compared to 28% of Middle East and African organisations. Nearly a fifth (19%) of Middle East and African organisations are not backed up, which is higher than the global average of 14%. • Over two in five (43%) global organisations plan to leverage cloudbased backup managed by a BaaS provider within the next two years, this is the same as Middle East and African organisations. Claude Schuck, Regional Manager, Middle East at Veeam, said: “According to our 2020 Data Protection Trends Report, Middle East and African organisations would be well advised to focus on staff training and development as well as on IT modernisation to accelerate Digital Transformation. “With data being the most valuable business asset today, its protection and security is paramount and should be the base and stepping stone of each company’s digitalisation strategy. Although organisations in the Middle East spend a lot on security technologies in general, there is still a considerable discrepancy when it comes to planning and implementing a data protection policy. Regional IT decision-makers need to have a consistent action plan in place which includes important measures like stress testing of IT systems, regular backups, a Disaster Recovery plan and educating employees.”• www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 43