Symantec recently announced the findings of its 2011 Small
Business Virtualization Poll, which examined the adoption of
virtualization within small businesses and its impact on
their organizations. According to the survey, small
businesses have a strong interest in virtualization, but are still
learning how to adopt it in their organizations. As they
implement server virtualization, small businesses are putting their
data at risk. The survey found that most small businesses
aren’t taking the most basic steps to secure and protect
their virtual environments. The survey is based on 658
respondents in 28 countries worldwide, of which 306 were from the
Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.
“The majority of respondents cited cost efficiencies
and disaster-recovery readiness as benefits they’re hoping to
gain, with most still early in the adoption cycle. We also
found that many small businesses are neglecting to protect their
virtual environments, largely due to budget and staffing
constraints,” said Ajay Goel, managing director, India &
SAARC, Symantec.
Despite their interest in virtualization, many small businesses
are finding it difficult to move from discussions to
execution. Only eight percent of APJ-based respondents have
deployed virtualised servers and they are focusing their
early-stage efforts on simpler, less critical application
areas. Top challenges include performance (64 percent),
backup (61 percent) and workload capacity and planning issues (58
percent). Nearly a third of small businesses not now planning
virtualisation cited lack of experience as a factor.
As small businesses move to virtual environments, they do not
protect and secure their data. Only 13 percent always back up
their virtualised servers and 24 percent backup infrequently or not
at all. They are not doing any better in securing their data
– only 40 percent are completely secured. Respondents
say budget and staffing issues are preventing them from taking
these essential actions. Even those who said they are
somewhat or completely secure are, in fact, less secure than they
think. A staggering 76 percent forego endpoint protection, 73
percent do not have antivirus on their virtual servers, and 51
percent don’t have a firewall.
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