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Asia-Pacific lacks adequate disaster recovery operations

IDC survey reveals much is yet to be done

A recent IDC-facilitated survey of Asia-Pacific markets shows that in the event of a disaster, most corporations would be left with less than half of their systems running.

It said statistics show if a disaster occurs, less than a third of the organisations interviewed would be capable of restoring more than 50 per cent of their applications in real-time.

Considering the recent tragedies in the region, these figures also pose the question: is this level of recovery satisfactory when information technology (especially in the commercial sector) is a vital aspect of normal daily operations?

IDC associate director for infrastructure, Matt Oostveen, said, "Take the examples of two major outages that occurred in 2010 across the region; DBS Bank Singapore had their systems offline for seven hours in July 2010 and Virgin Blue was out for even longer in September 2010.”

Though there is a significant impact on affected businesses, its effect on the many customers of these businesses should be given greater consideration, he said.

Further research also showed three other findings:

  1. Only 11 per cent of respondents are capable of restoring any of their systems in real-time
  2. IT systems are required just as essentially across diverse industries
  3. Companies with offline systems, even for a short period, could potentially suffer financial impacts – particularly if the point-in time is critical for the systems to function

IDC said if businesses are able to restore their key systems in real-time, the issue may not be as severe as it appears.

Many governments in the region have attempted at counteracting such concerns by establishing strategies to minimise such outages.

IDC suggests governments should do more in areas where access to IT systems are critical, not only for companies who own and supervise them, but also for customers impacted by them.