Enterprises Finally Understanding Value of Backing Up PCs

Companies are finally understanding that companywide backing up of business files and other data on personal computers is probably a good idea. “The threat of potential damages resulting from the theft, loss or compromise of critical proprietary data on enterprise PCs” is forcing IT managers to invest in “more robust data protection and recovery solutions,” an IDC research project has found.

According to the survey, released Jan. 12, “more than half (53 percent) of all organizations surveyed have deployed … software or [a] service” in order to back up employees’ personal computers. That number has hovered far below that in past years.

“Firms are now backing up PC data, once a long-forgotten and overlooked information asset,” said Laura DuBois, program director of IDC’s Storage Software office. “The most prevalent approach is centralized backup software, although legacy approaches still exist.”

According to IDC, “Some organizations (32.5 percent of those surveyed) continue to rely on individual employees to back up data themselves.”

The next step in this realization is that virtual desktops are probably an even better way to go, since they’re all centrally managed.

“In the longer term, there is a strategic opportunity for suppliers that integrate PC data and system-level protection with security PC management and desktop virtualization,” DuBois said. “With IT executives struggling to reduce the cost of PC management, desktop virtualization is certainly an enabling technology that is likely to fuel an even greater focus on data and system level protection for PCs.”

Additional findings included:

“Larger firms are more likely to have deployed a centralized PC backup approachFirms are deploying PC backup due to concerns of potential hardware failure as well as to comply with legal or regulatory policiesIncreased penetration of portable PC clients is driving the need for PC backup solutions that must effectively handle protection of data that is in an offline mode as well as connected over WAN links“