SMBs Increasingly Adopting Data Protection Technologies

By Greg McNevin

February 10, 2009: A special report from IDC says that small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) are increasingly adopting data protection technologies, previously only seen in enterprise data centres.

According to the analyst firm, the days of just burning DVDs from time to time to protect data are over, with SMBs adopting technologies like replication or disk-to-disk-to-tape backup. It hastily adds that smaller firms are not ready to adopt enterprise-scale products that might be too complicated and expensive, but they are looking for appropriate solutions which don’t require significant financial and human resources to acquire, deploy, and manage.

Titled “Data Protection in United States SMBs: Opportunity and Analysis”, the report is based on a user survey that investigated the current and planned data protection environments for firms of different sizes. It found that SMBs use diverse methods of data protection, that data protection is a big part of storage budgets among SMBs, and that small businesses (SBs) and medium businesses (MBs) differ in their reasons for selecting data protection solutions and future data protection methods.

“Vendors looking to capitalise on the SMB interest in various data protection technologies need to develop product capabilities and position their offerings with messages important to SMB customers,” says Laura DuBois, program director for Storage Software at IDC. “Such messages should focus on how smoothly a product can be integrated into an existing IT environment, what functionality it provides, and how easy the product management is.”

“At the same time, education of end users and channel partners about return on investment and potential cost savings will be critical for breaking through the 'pricing is too high' concern,” adds Natalya Yezhkova, research manager for Storage Systems at IDC.

“This is especially true when price savings are less obvious, as with online services. Vendors need to teach end users to look at the whole picture that involves all the different types of expenses associated with different approaches to data protection, including intangible benefits like the ability to restore data quickly in a case of failure.”

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