Kroll Ontrack Singapore, a technology services division of the global risk consulting company Kroll Inc., released its latest virtualization data loss findings from a series of surveys conducted at the VMware Forum events in Singapore and Australia in October/November 2011 that included 107 face-to-face interviews with IT professionals.

Their survey uncovered that 67% of organizations in Singapore and Australia frequently experience data loss from a virtual environment, placing them between Europe (73%) and the US (65%).

Key findings of the study include:

  • 52% of participants in Singapore experienced a data loss in the past year
  • 22% of those surveyed experienced more than five virtual data loss incidents in the past year
  • 54% of those experiencing data loss were not able to recover 100% of the data
  • 74% of participants from Australia experienced a data loss in the past year

A virtualization data loss can be catastrophic for an organization. Common causes of data loss from virtualized environments include file system corruption, deleted virtual machines, internal virtual disk corruption, RAID and other storage/server hardware failures and deleted or corrupt files contained within virtualized storage systems.

Determining the financial impact of a business disruption is difficult because there are both tangible factors, including productivity loss, missed sales opportunities and staff’s hourly time, but also less tangible factors such as potential non-compliance penalties, damage to corporate image and weakened customer confidence. A Forrester survey noted, for instance, that 15% of respondents knew the cost of their business’ downtime - at an average nearly $145,000 per hour.

“Successful organizations realize that any disruption within the virtual infrastructure, regardless of how small, will have an amplified impact on the business as a whole” said CK Lee, Country Manager, Kroll Ontrack Singapore. “Virtualization contracts often claim no liability for data corruption, deletion, destruction or loss. As a result, it is critical for IT leaders and business continuity planners to proactively include a data recovery service provider in their contingency plans.”

By MediaBUZZ