Lost data fear persuades SMEs to climb aboard

More small to medium-sized enterprises in the Middle East are turning to cloud computing storage services with greater concern for disaster recovery solutions.

More small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Middle East are turning to cloud computing storage services with greater concern for disaster recovery solutions.

The trend towards the cloud has picked up according to a senior executive at EMC as more chief executives realise the cost efficiency and higher levels of productivity it can enable for their businesses.

Generally most businesses in the region are requesting data protection. Protecting data from physical disasters and cyber attacks has become a crucial requirement for many.

"What does seem interesting is a lot of them are concerned about disaster recovery and replicating the data. There is a growing awareness for high-end data protection and recovery," said Colin Bailey, the senior director of enterprise storage division at EMC. "Those high-end requirements are starting to move down to SMEs."

While globally most companies are driven to protect data in cases of physical disaster such as floods, in the Middle East companies are more concerned with cyber security threats and computer viruses that can corrupt their data.

The Middle East is the most attacked region for cyber attacks across the world.

A recent report from Symantec also highlighted a growing trend towards attacks on SMEs. Over the past year there has been a 42 per cent increase in targeted attacks in the enterprise sector of which 31 per cent were aimed at SMEs. Most of these attacks are designed to steal intellectual property. SMEs are especially vulnerable because they reach larger companies.

Most companies have 50 to 100 terabytes of storage, and being able to recover all of that data is "practically impossible", according to Mr Bailey, without the right solutions in place.

The company, which has a 55 per cent share of the enterprise storage market in the region, is expecting greater growth this year. Last year EMC's share of the enterprise storage market grew by 10 per cent globally.