The survey points out that 22 percent of Indian enterprises conduct full scenario DR tests only once a year or less because of perceived fear of business disruption and lack of resources to conduct tests. Reasons cited include: lack of staff availability (56 percent), disruption to employees (58 percent), budgetary issues (44 percent) and disruption to customers (46 percent). In addition, 32 percent admit DR testing could affect sales and revenue.

Impact of disaster incidents on businesses

Disaster incidents increasingly put enterprises at risk and drastically affect business health. In fact, the repercussions could be severe and expensive if a disaster disrupts mission critical applications and services. Only 26 percent of respondents report they could achieve baseline operations within one day. Another 23 percent reported it would take a full week to achieve 100 percent normal operations. The survey found that the most feared consequences of disasters include loss of company information (76 percent), harm to their company's brand and reputation (64 percent), negative impact on overall customer loyalty (68 percent), damage to employee productivity (66 percent) and competitive standing (50 percent).

Virtualization driving reevaluation of plans

Virtualization is the major factor that is causing more than half (61 percent) of India respondents to reevaluate their DR plans. This can be attributed to the different challenges posed by virtual environments; processes for physical environments may not necessarily apply to virtual environments. In addition, legacy DR tools in virtual environments lack enterprise-class protection that enterprises require.