Survey reveals disaster recovery expectations and reality.

• Position: Up front: news, trends & analysis

August 2003 will be remembered for the biggest electrical blackout in North American history, and millions of businesses across the United States and Canada may feel the economic impact for a long time.

The lucky companies that did not lose data can probably thank their disaster recovery or backup plans. Analysts say that following a disaster, companies today are expected to be up and running quicker than they were just one year ago. But many are not confident their current technologies will meet their recovery time objective (RTO), the timeframe in which a company's systems are expected to be up and running after a disaster or outage.

A recent AmeriVault Corp. survey examined the backup and recovery practices of 114 companies within a variety of industries. According to the survey responses:

* More than 43 percent of enterprises surveyed store their backup tapes onsite, leaving them vulnerable to natural disasters and security breaches.

* After a disaster, more than 30 percent of companies are expected to be up and running more quickly than they were just one year ago.

* Only 50 percent of enterprises are confident that they can meet their RTO using their existing backup and recovery technologies.

"These survey results reveal what we have known for a long time--that there is a huge disconnect between existing enterprise backup and recovery practices and management expectations,"...