This figure is based on a survey of 3000 people attending Veritas disaster recovery seminars held around the world after September 11. Seventy-two percent of respondents said their organisations either had no disaster recovery plan, a plan that had never been tested, or one that had failed testing.
Furthermore, only 32 percent had a second site ready to take over in the event of a disaster, and 61 percent of those sites only have sufficient capacity to operate for days rather than weeks or months.
Valdez also noted a 2001 CIO Insight survey of CIOs and CTOs that found very small budgets for data recovery: 62 percent had budgets of less than US$100,000 -- "which means one person," -- and 82 percent had less than US$500,000.
The Veritas survey found 78.5 percent of organisations could afford hours, not days, of business interruption, yet only 12.5 percent are positioned for successful disaster recovery, and "that's the real bottom line number," Valdez said.
Stephen Withers is attending Veritas Vision 2002 as a guest of Veritas.
