OpenView Venture Partners

Zmags study examines m-commerce and tablet commerce readiness of top 100 American retailers

Amanda Maksymiw — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:19:40 +0000

Zmags has published the results of its study that assessed the cross-channel marketing readiness of the top 100 U.S. online retailers in terms of their use of mobile, tablet, and social media, and they discovered that very few of them are working to achieve the full commerce potential of mobile devices.

The study was conducted in November 2011 and examined the smartphone and tablet offerings of the leading 100 retailers (according to the 2011 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide). Android smartphones, iPhone, and iPad offerings were scrutinized by the researchers.They determined that among the top 100, only Disney, Gilt Groupe, and Urban Outfitters received a good score for strong offerings on for the devices being considered within the study. They also found that the implementation saw a significant variability among the different devices. For example, a far greater number of companies optimized for smartphones than for other types of mobile devices. In fact, over half of the retailers studied had offerings optimized only for smartphones.According to this study, the tablet has yet to see any widespread optimization. In fact, Nike was the only retailer that was found to use the unique interface capabilities for tablet in their entirety. Equally, the researchers were not shocked by this data as the tablet platform is still quite new.What they decided was that it seems that the majority of retailers are attempting to manage “only one or two pieces of the bigger puzzle,” which includes multiplatform branding, technical optimization, commerce, and creating an engaging experience for consumers.

Leading Retailers Still Not Optimized for eCommerce

Amanda Maksymiw — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:05:54 +0000

It’s a head-scratching reality that underscores just how unprepared most retailers remain in the face of new opportunities born of the recent eCommerce revolution.

According to an insightful study commissioned by Zmags, an up-and-coming provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, only one-third of the top 100 online retailers are truly “ready” for eCommerce today.Put differently, roughly two-thirds of the world’s biggest online retailers haven’t yet optimized their websites for tablets like Apple’s iPad and other prominent mobile devices that are very inviting to online shoppers.

“Adequate Enough”

Zmags finds that most retailers are bypassing tablet-ready websites and eCommerce platforms in favor of the easier, less expensive route: standard websites that deliver an “adequate enough” tablet user experience.Further underscoring this lackluster effort to bring their online storefronts up to speed with the rest of the mobile community, two-thirds of the respondents admit to having built iPhone applications. But here’s the kicker. Only half of this bunch has implemented in-app purchases – a feature that is red-hot in the mCommerce space and among an increasingly mobile-savvy user population.If you’re somewhat surprised by the findings, you’re in good company. W. Sean Ford, COO and CMO of Zmags, was surprised too.

“What we discovered, unexpectedly, was that very few retailers-even among this elite group of marketers-are tapping into the full shopping potential of mobile and tablet devices. In fact, not even close to it,” Ford says.“Only one quarter of retailers are ready to take a consumer through checkout over tablets, but 49 percent of today’s tablet owners said they plan to shop even more next year using their device. This reflects a serious disconnect between how consumers want to shop and the inconsistent experiences they are being offered. It’s a crucial issue that retailers need to address before their competitors do.”

Ignoring The Power of Social Commerce

Zmags found – not surprisingly – that all 100 top retailers now have Facebook pages to promote their respective brands. But only one of these leading global online retailers allows consumers to make purchases directly from their Facebook page.Given recent studies showing that the addition of an eCommerce app to one’s Facebook page can boost sales by upwards of 15%, the amount of lost revenue across the online shopping space could be substantial in light of how retailers continue to discount the value of social commerce opportunities.Zmags did, however, identify some retailers who are largely “getting it right.” The big winners are Gilt Groupe, Disney and Urban Outfitters. The three retailers were praised for having the strongest and most robust mobile offerings across most devices and channels.Another 19 retailers “appeared to be making moves in the right direction by developing engaging content such as look books, catalogs, editorial picks, etc.” Zmags was quick to point out, though, that none of them had applied the “dynamic environment or optimized their brand experiences” across the full range of smartphones, tablets and Facebook.To check out the new whitepaper from Zmags – “Mobile and Tablet e-Commerce: Is Anyone Really Ready?” – click here to register and download the eye-opening report.

Exinda Continues Channel Momentum with Raft of New Partner Signings

Amanda Maksymiw — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 04:54:33 +0000

Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimisation solutions incorporating Unified Performance Management, is on course to meet its ambitious UK partner recruitment targets this year, since launching its partner programme in November 2011.

Over the last three months, 10 partners have either attained Exinda Platinum Partner status, or switched vendor allegiances to become Exinda Gold partners.

“We’re delighted by the numbers of resellers that have shown a desire to build successful business revenues around Exinda’s innovative technology,” said Exinda’s EMEA VP of Sales, Adam Davison.“They are seeing the benefits wrapped around our next generation WAN optimisation solutions, and using them as a means to make more out of their customer offerings. Our increasing momentum in the channel reflects the growing market demand for our solutions. Exinda partners are best placed to take advantage of a rapidly evolving market landscape for network visibility, control and optimisation that is reeling from seismic shifts in cloud, SaaS, video and Web 2.0 application usage.”“We immediately saw the benefit of committing ourselves to become an Exinda Platinum Partner,” explains Jeff Orr at Stack Data Solutions Ltd.“Having a WAN optimisation solution that gives our customers integrated monitoring, visibility and acceleration techniques on their core network is proving very popular as they seek ways to get more out of their existing infrastructure. By becoming a Platinum partner we now have the benefit of a highly differentiated market offering, greater margin retention and access to a range of technical, sales and go to market support services. We’re genuinely looking forward to a prosperous and mutually beneficial relationship.”

Stack Data Solutions Ltd is one of six partners that have either achieved the Platinum status already, or who are in the process of being ratified for accreditation. Meanwhile, Exinda has added several extra recruits to its Partner Programme including new Gold Partner, finance sector focussed Lato Networks.

“Exinda’s WAN optimisation solution is a very compelling technology for us, and fits well into our portfolio,” adds Paul Judd, Director of Lato Networks.“Since becoming a Gold partner, we have benefited from improved margins and a higher level of marketing and technical assistance. For our customers, they benefit from a valuable next generation WAN optimisation technology that enables them to integrate network monitoring, visibility and acceleration techniques within a single platform, removing the need for extra hardware and therefore cost.”

According to Exinda’s distribution partner Exclusive Networks UK, resellers are starting to see the market opportunity around next generation WAN optimisation as being a key enabler for many IT initiatives.

“Together with Exinda we have been working extremely hard engaging, enabling and energising resellers providing them a range of sales, technical and marketing support services. This has resulted in a wave of new partner signings and a significant number of interested partners looking for a differentiated, high margin alternative to legacy WAN optimisation players,” says Jim Harvey, Business Development Director, Emerging Technologies, Exclusive Networks UK.Davison concludes, “We are very excited by the number of reseller partners that have already joined our programme. As more companies increase their use of UC, video content and collaboration, and cloud computing models evolve, the need for WAN optimisation that enables, not hinders, these applications will become even more attractive as a key solution sale for our partners.”

About Exinda®

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next generation WAN Optimisation and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,500 organisations in over 80 countries worldwide improve the end user experience, manage application performance, manage congestion over the WAN and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.###Exinda and the Exinda logo are trademarks of Exinda. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

U.S. Men & Women Agree Southwest Airlines, Google and Dove are Most Desired Brands in 2012

Amanda Maksymiw — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 04:38:55 +0000

As in life, men and women disagreed more than they agreed as to which brands have earned their most affection.

Both men and women rated Southwest Airlines, Google and Dove among their top ten brands. Beyond these, though, women have real heart for Hallmark, Kohl's, Lexus, Target, Neutrogena and Crest. Men, on the other hand, were most taken with Cadillac, BMW, Apple, Sharp, and GE.The Second Annual "Most Desired Brands in the U.S." just released by leading global strategic neuroinsight firm Buyology Inc and uSamp, a leader in providing targeted audiences and SaaS technologies for business intelligence. This list is the only report to uantitatively type and measure consumer relationships with brands using rigorous quantitative tools that measure people's deepest, non-conscious connections to brands. The full report can be found at www.buyologyinc.com.The Most Desired Brands in the U.S. Report used Buyology's proprietary technology to test more than 220 brands across ten diverse industries, among a sample of 4,000 people representative of the US population. The test was conducted immediately following the Super Bowl on February 6-10, 2012.

"This year's brand ranking demonstrates that it's essential for companies to invest in creating deeper differentiated relationships with their consumers. These relationships provide the context that either amplifies or diminishes everything the brand does to connect with its customers," said Gary Singer, Founding Partner and CEO, Buyology Inc."Buyology's neuro-insight tools provide rigorous analytic measurement of these deeper, previously unmeasured, connections to provide unique insight to brands and a roadmap for how to trengthen their relationships."Added Matt Dusig, Co-Founder & CEO, uSamp, "uSamp is thrilled to power Buyology's 2012 report on The Most Desired Brands in America. As two of Forbes' Most Promising Companies in 2011, uSamp and Buyology both thrive on disruptive innovation and believe in the power of consumer insights. This synergy, along with our ability to target an audience of over 6.5 million, will prove valuable to Fortune 500 brands across the nation."

BUYOLOGY INC/uSAMP 2012 MOST DESIRED BRANDS in the U.S.
MEN		WOMEN
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES	1	SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
CADILLAC	2	GOOGLE
BMW	3	HALLMARK
DOVE	4	DOVE
BED BATH & BEYOND	5	JETBLUE
APPLE	6	KOHL'S
GOOGLE	7	LEXUS
SHARP	8	TARGET
GE	9	NEUTROGENA
MACY'S	10	CREST

ABOUT BUYOLOGY:

Buyology is a leading global neuro-insight firm that rigorously measures the 85% of human decision making that drives customer preference for consumer brands around the world. Utilizing advances in the medical, neurological and social sciences, Buyology has developed statistically validated, large-sample web-based tools to quantitatively measure and immediately leverage a deeper, understanding of customer responses to new products, other innovation, positioning, branding, advertising, digital content, packaging, and experiences.BUYOLOGY, INC.launched in 2009 following the release ofMartin Lindstrom's New York Times bestseller, "Buyology: The Truth and Lies About Why We Buy" (Random House). Buyology has served global leaders in consumer products, financial service, media, pharmaceuticals and technology and is internationally recognized as a thought leader in driving marketing insight and effectiveness, Buyology publishes America's Most Desired Brands annually and has been cited and covered in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The New York Times, among others. In 2011, Buyology was featured as one of Forbes 100 Most Promising Companies in America. For more information on Buyology, visit www.BuyologyInc.com.

About uSamp

uSamp (uSamp.com), the Answer Network, is a premier provider of technology and survey respondents used to obtain consumer and business insights. uSamp's solutions and SaaS platform transform the way companies gain intelligence to make better, faster decisions about their products and services by tapping into uSamp's 6.5 million global panel of survey respondents. Through uSamp's proprietary technologies for self-serve survey authoring, self-survey sampling, and private-label panel management, companies have on-dema nd access to millions of profiled survey respondents.uSamp is based inLos Angeles, with five offices throughout the United States, Europe and India. The company has 185 employees worldwide, led by serial entrepreneurs Matt Dusig and Gregg Lavin. uSamp ranked #11 in the 2011 Forbes America's Most Promising Company List, was named one of the fastest growing private companies in Los Angeles by the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and one of the best places to work in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Acronis looks to recruit VMware resellers with major bonus to margins

Amanda Maksymiw — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:43:47 +0000

Woburn, MA- based backup vendor Acronis has a major campaign under way to recruit VMware resellers to sell its flagship Acronis vmProtect solution.

Its latest initiative is a significant bonus to margins, with a large additional bonus when their solution is sold with VMware.

"In 2009, we launched our virtual backup and recovery product and our first all virtual product last year," said Izzy Azeri, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas & Business Development, at Acronis.

Acronis restructured its channel program last year to try and drive more channel business in the virtual space, and they have added 350 new partners in the U.S. since then.Now we are offering the channel something much more lucrative, Azeri said.First they are raising overall margin by a maximum 10 points -- to 30 -- on all products.

"We give that 30 points to distribution, and what a partner is paid depends on their tier," Azeri said. This is paid up front.

The real plum with the new program is an additional 30 points given when selling Acronis products alongside VMware

"That extra 30% is not dependent on tier," Azeri said.

Azeri said they have grown their VMware business significantly since VMprotect was launched, but that the growth has been disproportional among their larger partners.

"We have good overlap with VMware on the large DMR community, but once we move beyond that, thats where we are looking to recruit partners, on the VAR side," he said.

Acronis vmProtect is specifically designed for pure VMware vSphere environments and uses all available VMware APIs to perform in virtual environments with little or no IT support, with all backup and recovery tasks able to be managed remotely through a web based interface, and requiring little training to get up and running.

"We will also be providing great marketing collateral for partners to use as well as part of the promo," Azeri said.

eEye Digital Security and 451 Research to Co-Host Webinar

Amanda Maksymiw — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:36:15 +0000

eEye Digital Security, the industry's leading innovator of threat management solutions, is teaming with 451 Research to co-host a free webinar on February 23, 2012, to help security professionals and IT administrators manage their "big data" to make better informed business decisions.

The webinar, "Turning Your Big Security Data into a Big Advantage," featuring Andrew Hay of 451 Research, will discuss the value of using various types of security data -- vulnerability, attack, exploit, configuration, compliance, mitigation, etc. -- to make more informed decisions about how to protect the network.To register for the session, go to http://eeye.co/451webn.

"While many tools collect data from the network and security environment, few help users make sense of it," said Mike Puterbaugh, vice president of marketing, eEye Digital Security."With the insight of 451 Research, we can help the security and IT community understand not only all the data coming at them, but what can be done with it to improve their security postures and better manage their businesses."

The hour-long session will offer examples of big data collected in the enterprise and how to identify what information is valuable and actionable; a discussion of what traditional SIM/SEIM tools can and can't do with big data, and what decisions can be impacted throughout the enterprise by using big data, with an emphasis on internal and external compliance requirements.Tweet this: eEye Digital Security, 451 Research to host webinar on using big data effectively 2.23, http://eeye.co/451webn.To register for the session, go to http://eeye.co/451webn.

About eEye Digital Security

Since 1998, eEye Digital Security has made vulnerability and compliance management simpler and more efficient by providing the only unified solution that integrates assessment, mitigation, protection, and reporting into a complete offering with optional add-on modules for configuration compliance, regulatory reporting, and integrated patch management.eEye's world-renowned research and development team is consistently the first to uncover critical vulnerabilities and build new protections into our solutions to prevent their exploit. Thousands of mid-to-large-size private sector and government organizations, including the largest vulnerability management installations in the world, rely on eEye to protect against the latest known and zero-day vulnerabilities.Retina CS recently was awarded a five-start "Best Buy" rating in Vulnerability Assessment solutions from SC Magazine. The review can be seen at http://blog.eeye.com/general/sc-magazine-5-star-award.

About 451 Research

451 Research, a division of The 451 Group, is focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company's analysts provide critical and timely insight into the competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Business value is delivered via daily concise and insightful published research, periodic deeper-dive reports, data tools, market-sizing research, analyst advisory, and conferences and events.Clients of the company -- at vendor, investor, service-provider and end-user organizations -- rely on 451 Research's insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making. 451 Research is headquartered in New York, with offices in key locations, including San Francisco, Washington DC, London, Boston, Seattle and Denver.

Contact:

Judy-Ann Roberts 451 Research Email ContactAnne Price PR Works, Inc. 602-840-6495 Email Contact

Less Than One-Third of Leading Online Retailers Are Ready for Tablets, Finds Zmags Study

Amanda Maksymiw — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:25:30 +0000

News Facts:

Zmags, the leading provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, today released results of a research report entitled, "Mobile & Tablet e-Commerce: Is anyone really ready?"
Zmags commissioned HawkPartners, a marketing consulting and research firm, to assess the mobile and tablet offerings of the Top 100 Internet retailers, who were evaluated on the shopping and purchasing experiences they provided across tablets (iPad), smartphones (iPhone and Android) and Facebook.
The research revealed that fewer than one-third of retailers have optimized sites for tablet commerce. Most are simply relying on their standard websites to provide an "adequate enough" tablet shopping experience.
Other key findings include:
- More than half of retailers have developed smartphone-specific offerings to provide key functionality for the smaller screen.
- While more than two-thirds of the retailers have developed iPhone apps, only half of that group offers the ability to purchase via the app.
- All 100 retailers have Facebook brand pages, but only one (Coldwater Creek) lets consumers directly purchase from the Facebook page.
The research identified three retailers (Gilt Groupe, Disney and Urban Outfitters) as having the strongest and most robust mobile offerings across most devices and channels.
Only 19 of the top 100 retailers extended beyond ordinary HTML-type content to include more engaging material such as look books, catalogs, editorial picks, etc. However, none of them extended the dynamic environment or optimized the brand experience across the full range of smartphones, tablets and Facebook.
An interactive multimedia summary of the research is available at http://www.zmags.com/blog/new-research-report-mobile-tablet-commerce-is-anyone-really-ready
A full research report, entitled ""Mobile & Tablet e-Commerce: Is anyone really ready?"can be downloaded atwww.zmags.com/top100.
All results are based on the research conducted over a 4-week period in November and December 2011.

Supporting Quote:

"What we discovered, unexpectedly, was that very few retailers—even among this elite group of marketers—are tapping into the full shopping potential of mobile and tablet devices. In fact, not even close to it," said W. Sean Ford, COO and CMO of Zmags."Only one quarter of retailers are ready to take a consumer through checkout over tablets, but forty-nine percent of today's tablet owners said they plan to shop even more next year using their device. This reflects a serious disconnect between how consumers want to shop and the inconsistent experiences they are being offered. It's a crucial issue that retailers need to address before their competitors do."

About Zmags

Zmags helps thousands of the world's most progressive global retailers and brands design brilliant and consistent marketing and merchandising campaigns across social, mobile, tablet, and e-commerce platforms, driving product discovery and inspiring purchases. Using the Zmags on-demand rich media merchandising platform, leading brands have measurably and dramatically increased customer engagement, conversion rates, order size and brand loyalty without the burden of IT constraints. Zmags is among the fastest growing technology companies in North America, ranking #70 on the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500. Zmags is headquartered in Boston, MA. with European offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com.

Media Contact:

Samantha McGarry InkHouse for Zmags 781-966-4107 Zmags@inkhouse.netSOURCE ZmagsBack to topRELATED LINKS http://www.zmags.com

Exinda Pens Exclusive Distribution Deal with COMPUTERLINKS to Address Growing Market Demand in Middle East

Amanda Maksymiw — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:18:57 +0000

Exinda, a global provider of next generation WAN optimization solutions, incorporating Unified Performance Management, today announced it has bolstered its presence in the Middle East by appointing COMPUTERLINKS as its exclusive distribution partner across the region.

The deal enables Exinda to better satisfy growing market demand for its technology and further reinforces its continued commitment to the region as a growth market.As the leading value added distributor in the region, COMPUTERLINKS will help Exinda increase its channel footprint and add significant momentum to Exinda’s sales, service and support capabilities as it seeks to accelerate penetration and increase market share.

“As a business Exinda continues to grow ahead of the market and that particularly applies to the Middle East where we are seeing pent up demand for our solution and a significant growth opportunity”, explained Adam Davison, VP Sales EMEA at Exinda.“We needed a strategic partner to help us capitalize on this opportunity, a distributor with a proven track record in taking innovative and disruptive technologies to market, building channel momentum and providing value added services. COMPUTERLINKS ticked all the boxes and we are genuinely excited about the opportunity this presents for a mutually beneficial and rewarding business relationship.”Commenting on the agreement Lee Reynolds, Managing Director, COMPUTERLINKS, Middle East and Asia said, “It’s increasingly rare these days to find a technology that lives up to its next generation billing and truly disrupts the market. Exinda’s integrated approach encompassing visibility, QoS and acceleration within a single platform sets it apart from the legacy WAN optimisation providers and represents a great opportunity for our channel partners to be able to differentiate themselves in the market as enterprises look to realise the benefits of Cloud, SaaS, video and Web 2.0 applications. We look forward to working with the Exinda team and growing its business across the region.”

About COMPUTERLINKS

COMPUTERLINKS is one of the leading value added distributors for international top manufacturers in information technology. As the link between the manufacturers and resellers, COMPUTERLINKS smooth the path for the successful distribution of intelligent IT solutions from the areas of e-security and e-business. The COMPUTERLINKS product portfolio is geared to the growing needs of customers for security in the field of ever more complex, global IT structures. With branches in 18 countries COMPUTERLINKS reach is constantly expanding to cover new territories and strive to retain its position as a leading VAD for international IT manufacturers, who are all market leaders in their fields.

About Exinda®

Acronis Survey Reveals Disaster Recovery Failing to Catch Up With Virtualization, Cloud

Amanda Maksymiw — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:20:05 +0000

According to a new survey conducted by Acronis, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. are failing to adapt their disaster recovery operations to new virtualized and cloud-based IT environments.

Although both virtualization and the cloud are on the rise, U.S. SMBs are relying on outdated technologies and methodologies to protect their data in the wake of a disaster.The 2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index revealed that 89 percent of U.S. SMBs already have some portion of their IT infrastructure virtualized. In addition, U.S. SMBs predict that 31 percent of their servers will be virtualized by the end of the year. However, businesses aren't protecting their virtualized infrastructure adequately, with only 41 percent backing up their virtual machines as often as their physical ones. Almost half (48 percent) only backup their virtual machines on a weekly or monthly basis.Cloud adoption is on the rise as well, but isn't being implemented enough for backup and disaster recovery. Thirty-six percent of U.S. SMBs have more than half of their infrastructure in the cloud, but only 24 percent are using the cloud for backup and disaster recovery. In fact, 29 percent did not have an offsite backup and disaster recovery strategy at all.

"Clearly there is a disconnect between new models of infrastructure and the backup and disaster recovery methods that should accompany them," said Izzy Azeri, senior vice president and general manager at Acronis Americas. "Virtualized and cloud-based servers require the same degree of protection as physical ones. New technology and updated contingency planning are the keys to bringing disaster recovery up to speed with today's diversified infrastructures."

Businesses have high hopes for virtualization and the cloud. Forty percent of U.S. SMBs agreed that migrating to a virtualized and/or cloud-based environment would help ensure their backup and disaster recovery procedures run more smoothly. Additionally, 76 percent agree that the best way to improve backup and disaster recovery would be to have an integrated (physical, virtual, cloud) solution. It's clear that as the IT infrastructure landscape continues to grow in complexity, there is a rising demand for backup and disaster recovery solutions that can protect data from increasingly unpredictable threats.Other interesting virtualization and cloud findings from the 2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index include:

U.S. SMBs are losing on average $388,426 a year due to downtime
SMBs' biggest challenge in using the cloud for backup and disaster recovery was the complex movement of data between physical, virtual and cloud environments (75 percent)
59 percent of U.S. SMBs use separate backup and recovery solutions for their physical and virtual environments

Notes to the editor:

The survey was conducted by the Ponemon Institute across 18 countries in September and October 2011. Over 6,000 IT practitioners were surveyed in small- to mid-market organisations with no more than 1,000 seats. The full survey and details of how the index was calculated and where each country appears can be found here:

www.acronisinfo.com

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis' disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis.Acronis is a registered trademark or trademarks of Acronis Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

Contact Information

Press Contacts:

Lucy Millington Acronis, Inc. T: 781.782.9181 E: lucy.millington@acronis.com

Meredith Eaton March Communications T: 617.960.9877 E: acronis@marchpr.com

SMB Adoption of Virtualisation in 2012 Will Outpace that of Enterprises, Claims Acronis Survey

Amanda Maksymiw — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:06:25 +0000

Cloud gains momentum but still not delivering on the hype

According to new research from Acronis, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) around the world are planning to adopt server virtualisation in 2012 at a faster pace than large enterprises. However, the survey also identified widespread backup and disaster recovery shortcomings for virtual servers amongst SMBs. Meanwhile, previous enthusiasm for cloud infrastructure has, at least so far, failed to turn into reality.IT managers at 6,000 SMBs in 18 countries were surveyed for the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index 2012. They predict that 29% of their servers will be virtualised by the end of the year, a growth rate of 21%. This is 50% higher than the pace identified in a recent Gartner* report that predicted virtualisation adoption by enterprises is to increase by 14% over the same period.In the UK, virtualisation adoption is predicted to increase by 63%, with virtual machines accounting for almost a third (31%) of SMB servers by the end of 2012. A mere 13% of organisations in the UK still have no virtual servers in their current IT infrastructure.

Virtual Data at Risk

According to the Acronis survey, UK SMBs cite increased efficiency, flexibility and speed of deployment as the main drivers for server virtualisation. However, despite the planned adoption of Virtual Machines (VMs), the survey identified widespread backup and disaster recovery shortcomings, including:

Over half (60%) of UK organisations admit that they don’t back up their VMs as often as their physical ones, making them the worst culprits globally;
Over half (67%) of UK SMBs back up their VMs infrequently, typically weekly or monthly;
Just 37% back up their VMs on a daily or weekly basis.

Although VMs seem to get short thrift in the backup and DR department, survey respondents claim that the monetary value of data hosted on virtual servers is almost identical to that hosted on physical servers.

Commenting on the findings, David Blackman, general manager, Northern Europe and MEA at Acronis said: “Virtualisation has become more affordable and relatively easy for SMBs - the high growth rate of adoption should not be a surprise. However, as protecting data is one of the most fundamental requirements for any business today, it’s particularly disappointing that VMs get such poor treatment. Some businesses are potentially playing Russian roulette with their virtual backups and, if their luck runs out, will face very real and potentially very messy consequences.”

A cloudy future?

When asked about cloud adoption, the vast majority of UK organisations (85%) surveyed have some form of cloud-based IT infrastructure. As a specific category, cloud now represents a sizeable 20% of all IT infrastructure. However, only 20% of UK businesses are using the cloud today, despite in last year’s survey 50% predicting that usage would increase during 2011. SMBs cited several reasons for their less-than-expected cloud usage, including concerns about recovery of data in the event of a disaster, non-compliance with data protection, bandwidth bottlenecks and workload and complexity.2012 cloud usage predictions seem far more grounded with just over one in four (29%) anticipating that more than 50% of their IT infrastructure will be cloud-based in 2012. UK SMBs say that cloud adoption this year will be driven by three factors: lower IT operating costs, fewer personnel and management resources and improved reliability of backups. Other cloud findings include:

Using the cloud for offsite backup is becoming a popular choice with almost a fifth (17%) using it for this purpose;
Half (50%) of UK organisations still rely on the traditional approach of physically taking backup tapes or disk offsite each day;
Over a third (35%) of UK companies still don’t have an offsite backup strategy in place at all.

Notes to the editor:

The survey was conducted by the Ponemon Institute across 18 countries in September and October 2011. Over 6,000 IT practitioners were surveyed in small- to mid-market organisations with no more than 1,000 seats. Details of how the index was calculated and where each country appears can be found here:

Tweet this: Do you back up #virtual servers as often as physical ones? #DRI report [link]*Gartner’s Virtualisation Research: Virtual Machines Will Slow in the Enterprise, Grow in the Cloud, Thomas J. Bittman and Lydia Leong, 4 March 2011, RA1010182011

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis' disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit http://www.acronis.co.uk. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis.Acronis, is a registered trademarks or trademarks of Acronis Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

Press Contacts:

Natasha Simmons / Emily Gallagher Touchdown PR Tel : +44 (0)1252 717040 Email : acronis(at)touchdownpr(dot)comLouise Tullin Tel: +44 (0)203 176 0354 / +44 (0)774 938 9654 Email: louise(dot)tullin(at)acronis(dot)com