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‘Divorce is a cakewalk compared to losing email for a week’

C'mon, guys - get a grip

More than a third of IT staff find the "loss of email more traumatic than events such as a car accident or getting a divorce".

This hard-to-credit finding comes from a survey of IT managers by Dynamic Markets, sponsored by storage software firm Veritas, out today.

Dynamic Markets found that properly functioning email systems are so critical that 68 per cent of companies say users get irate within as little as 30 minutes without email access, and within just 24 hours of email system failure, almost one fifth of IT managers say that their jobs would be on the line. For more than a third (34 per cent) of CIOs and IT managers, a week without email is "more traumatic than events such as a minor car accident, moving to a new home, or getting married or divorced", the survey found.

Really, guys. Get a grip.

Backup cock-ups

The 850 international IT managers were also asked about their email backup and management policies.

Almost all (99 per cent) said their companies back up email and attachments, however 56 per cent of these firms have at least some of their email locations excluded from automated back-up. And while 39 per cent of respondents think email could be used as legal evidence for or against their company, nearly half (46 per cent) say it would be difficult to locate and retrieve a particular email on the system if it was requested.

Five percent of those surveyed say email and attachments have already been used as legal evidence for or against their company, while pending US federal regulations have accelerated the burden placed on IT departments to effectively store and manage corporate email.

But the research reveals that only one-fifth (18 per cent) can recover emails from further back than a year, 30 per cent are able to recover back only to one month, and a pitiful 11 per cent can only recover from the previous week or less.

What a downer

When unplanned downtime does occur, only 4 per cent of IT managers say it takes less than one hour to restore email, while 15 per cent say it takes an hour, and 41 per cent say it takes over an hour to restore the entire system - including 9 per cent who take 24 hours or more. An alarming 39 per cent do not know how long it would take to restore their email systems.

According to Veritas, the survey reveals "alarming deficiencies in current email system management and backup and recovery methods" that place "businesses at risk".

The 850 IT manager quizzed during the survey were from medium to large-scale organizations employing 500+ staff located in the US, UK, elsewhere in Europe, South Africa and Middle East. & reg;

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