The cost per hour of downtime increased 65 per cent from $100,000 in 2010 to $165,000 in 2012, according to business intelligence research experts Aberdeen Group.

Furthermore, Symantec’s 2012 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey notes that globally the median cost of downtime for an SMB is $12,500 per day, remarked Andrew Calthorpe, chief executive officer, Condo Protego, one of the Middle East’s foremost turnkey data storage solutions providers and value-added resellers.

“In today’s relentless 24/7 global economy, businesses can no longer afford even minimal periods of downtime,” he said.

Calthorpe noted that the challenge of maintaining optimal data availability at all times is greater than ever before, particularly in the Middle East, and it is clear that those businesses that are slow to adapt to these trends will fall by the wayside.

“A lack of a comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plan can prove disastrous for data integrity, time, revenue, productivity and overall brand reputation - if you are out of the game, rest assured a competitor will step in,” he explained.

“Thankfully, business leaders in the region are waking up to the nature and magnitude of the problem, and world-class recovery plans are well on their way to becoming the norm.”

Downtime is on the rise globally, according to Symantec’s 2012 State of the Data Center report which reveals that 70 per cent of organisations experience downtime from power failure (11.3 hours per outage); while 63 per cent endure cyber-attacks (52.7 hours per outage).

The median downtime per outage in the last 12 months was 5 hours, and organizations experienced an average of 4 downtime incidents during the same period.

Symantec also found that 79 per cent of organizations reported increasing complexity in the data center. According to another Symantec study – 2012 State of Information Survey – the world has to contend with 2.2 zettabytes of business data, which has a $1.1 trillion price tag to store and secure.

“As today’s businesses generate more information and introduce new technologies into the data center, these changes can either act as a sail to catch the wind and accelerate growth, or an anchor holding organisations back,” said Ramzi Itani, channel director, Middle East and French-speaking Africa at Symantec.

“The difference is up to those organizations, which can meet the challenges head on by implementing effective disaster recovery and business continuity plans to keep information from becoming a liability.”

Symantec’s suite of data availability offerings includes NetBackup, Enterprise Vault, Storage FoundationHA and Disaster Recovery (DR), Volume Replicator, Cluster Server, and BackupExec, he added.

“While these solutions offer excellent performance, their exact configuration can vary wildly from business to business. This is where value added resellers like Condo Protego come in,” he said.

In 2011, Condo Protego achieved Master Specialization in all four Availability specialization areas, namely Archiving and e-Discovery, Storage Management, Data Protection Plus and High Availability.

“The Master Specialisation showcases Condo Protego’s expertise and proficiency in Symantec’s data protection, archiving, e-discovery and high availability solutions and services,” added Itani.

“With these Master Specialisations, Condo Protego has exhibited a deep investment in Symantec, and we are committed to providing our Master Specialists with products and services that help them differentiate from the competition and accelerate revenue.” – TradeArabia News Service