Virtualization and Cloud Technologies Add Complexity to Disaster Recovery Initiatives; Symantec research reveals gap in downtime expectations and reality

Dubai, UAE. – December 6, 2010– Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) has announced the global results of its sixth annual Symantec Disaster Recovery Study, which demonstrates the growing challenge of managing disparate virtual, physical and cloud resources because of added complexity for organizations protecting and recovering mission critical applications and data. In addition, the study shows that virtual systems are not properly protected.

The study highlights that nearly half – 44 percent – of data on virtual systems is not regularly backed up and only one in five respondents use replication and failover technologies to protect virtual environments. Respondents also indicated that 60 percent of virtualized servers are not covered in their current disaster recovery (DR) plans. This is up significantly from the 45 percent reported by respondents in 2009. 

Click to Tweet: Symantec study shows added complexity in DR initiatives resulting from virtualization and cloud: http://bit.ly/bGfA03

Inadequate Tools, Security and Control

Using multiple tools that manage and protect applications and data in virtual environments causes major difficulties for data center managers. In particular, nearly six in 10 of these respondents (58 percent) who encountered problems protecting mission-critical applications in virtual and physical environments reported this to be a large challenge for their organization.

In terms of cloud computing, respondents reported that their organization runs approximately 50 percent of mission-critical applications in the cloud. Two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) report that security is the main concern of putting applications in the cloud. However, the biggest challenge respondents face when implementing cloud computing and storage is the ability to control failovers and make resources highly available (55 percent).

Resource and Storage Constraints Hamper Backup

Respondents state that 82 percent of backups occur only weekly or less frequently, rather than daily. Resource constraints, lack of storage capacity, and incomplete adoption of advanced and more efficient protection methods hamper rapid deployment of virtual environments. In particular:

·         59 percent of respondents identified resource constraints (people, budget, and space) as the top challenge when backing up virtual machines.

·         Respondents state that the lack of available primary (57 percent) and backup storage (60 percent) hampers protecting mission critical data.

·         50 percent of respondents use advanced methods (clientless) to reduce the impact of virtual machine backups.

The Downtime and Recovery Gap

The study showed that the time required to recover from an outage is twice as long as respondents perceive it to be. When asked if a significant disaster were to occur at their organization that destroyed the main data center, respondents indicated that:

• They expected the downtime per outage to be two hours to be up and running after an outage.
• This is an improvement from 2009, when they reported it would take four hours to be up and running after an outage.
• The median downtime per outage in the last 12 months was five hours, more than doubling the two hour expectation.
• Organizations experienced on average four downtime incidents in the past 12 months.

Major Causes of Downtime

When asked what caused their organization to experience downtime over the past five years, respondents reported their outages were mainly from system upgrades, power outages and failures and cyberattacks. Specifically:

• 72 percent experienced an outage from system upgrades, resulting in 50.9 hours of downtime.
• 70 percent experienced an outage from power outages and failures, resulting in 11.3 hours of downtime.
• 63 percent experienced an outage from cyberattacks over the past 12 months resulting in 52.7 hours of downtime.

The study also showed a gap between those organizations that experience power outages and failures and those who have conducted an impact assessment for power outages and failures: Surprisingly, only 26 percent of respondents’ organizations have conducted a power outage and failure impact assessment.

About the 2010 Symantec Disaster Recovery Study

In its sixth year, the 2010 Symantec Disaster Recovery Study is an annual global study commissioned by Symantec to highlight business trends regarding disaster recovery planning and preparedness. Conducted by independent market research firm Applied Research West during October 2010, the study polled more than 1700 IT managers in large organizations across 18 countries in North America, Europe and the Middle East, Asia Pacific and South America to gain insight and understanding into some of the more complicated factors associated with disaster recovery.

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Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, email archiving, backup & recovery solutions.

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world.  Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

Juniper Networks Expands Leading Security Services Gateway Line to Address Small to Mid-Size Data Centers

SRX1400 Services Gateway Protects 10 Gbps Networks by delivering scalable Integrated Security Services

Dubai, UAE., Dec 5, 2010 – Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) has announced general availability of the SRX1400, the newest member of its leading SRX product line. The SRX1400 is a consolidated security services gateway ideal for securing small to mid-size enterprise, service provider and mobile operator data center environments. 

“Not only does the SRX1400 help companies migrate their mid-size data centers to 10Gbps, but it also helps them reduce costs in the process,” said Doug Murray, senior vice president and general manager, High-end Security Systems Business Unit at Juniper. “The SRX1400 consolidates multiple security functions, including our new AppSecure application security capabilities, on a single services gateway, providing the flexibility to scale bandwidth and services in the future.”

For mobile service providers, the SRX1400 is a cost-effective solution that delivers security at scale to their core networks and protects against a variety of attacks and unauthorized access on critical infrastructure including the internet connection on the Gi interface, roaming exchanges and signaling networks. With its separate control and data planes, the SRX 1400 combines carrier-class resiliency with advanced inspection and protection capabilities developed specifically for mobile networks and applications.

The SRX1400 simplifies management and configuration with an integrated, single security policy and device management system for multiple security services.  With excellent 1 and 10 GbE port density built-in and room for expansion, the modular design of the SRX1400 uses interchangeable cards from the SRX3000 line providing investment protection and simplifying sparing logistics.

“We are excited to see the expansion of the data center SRX product line with the introduction of the SRX1400,” said Bryan Miles, director of networking at Station Casinos.  “The security services scale in a small form factor is a great fit for our smaller data center deployments, and the common policy, OS and hardware modules with our installed base of SRX 3K’s simplifies our operations and lowers our cost.”

The SRX1400 consolidates multiple security services and functions into one compact system by tightly integrating the configuration, security policy and device management of these services within the Junos operating system. Data center, enterprise and service provider security services include: stateful inspection of IPv4, IPv6, Streams Control Transmission Protocol, IPsec VPN, SSL decryption, IP and GTP hardware assisted Quality of Service, dynamic and virtual routing, AppSecure, Network Address Translation and application level gateways for IPv4 and v6, SCTP and GTP protocols.

The SRX 1400 is available now and starts at $30K.

For more information about Juniper’s solutions, please refer to the following resources:

• Juniper Security portal — www.juniper.net/security
• Juniper Online Newsroom – www.juniper.net/press
• Juniper’s Social Channels – www.juniper.net/social

About Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud providers, Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that transform the experience and economics of networking. The company serves customers and partners worldwide, generating revenues exceeding $3 billion over the last year. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net). 

Juniper Networks Acquires Advanced Video Delivery Technology from Blackwave

Dubai, UAE., Dec. 1, 2010 - Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) has announced it has acquired the intellectual property assets of Blackwave, an innovator in Internet video storage and delivery infrastructure, further enhancing the company's solutions for delivering Internet video content with exceptional scale, performance and efficiency. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.


Juniper plans to integrate Blackwave's technology with Juniper Networks® Media Flow Controller, creating one of the most comprehensive converged content delivery solutions. This move reinforces Juniper's continued investment in technologies that bring value to service providers, content providers and content delivery networks (CDNs).

“The acquisition of Blackwave technology continues Juniper's commitment to the new network by serving the rapidly escalating appetite for high-quality video from anywhere to any device, ” said Rajan Raghavan, vice president and general manager, Content and Media Business Unit, Juniper Networks. “The Blackwave technology brings storage performance and scaling capabilities that, combined with the Media Flow platform and Juniper's high-performance networking systems, will provide a compelling solution for our customers who require scalable and efficient distribution of content and high-quality video over the Internet.”

Juniper Networks Media Flow portfolio includes advanced software and hardware designed to address the challenges of rich media delivery. Media Flow is a converged content delivery and caching solution that dramatically improves the performance of rich media delivery by leveraging unique innovations such as hierarchical caching, superior media-aware intelligence and massive scalability. With Media Flow, customers can profitably and efficiently deliver rich media content at massive scale.



About Juniper Networks


Juniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud providers, Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that transform the experience and economics of networking. The company serves customers and partners worldwide, generating revenues exceeding $3 billion over the last year. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net).

Libraries train employees in Database Management

The Public Libraries Department recently held a series of training courses for a group of its employees in database management at the Umm Suqeim library. The training courses were conducted by three companies, Advanced Arab Systems, Techknolwedge and Proquest.
Mohammed Jassim Al Eraidi, Director of the Public Libraries Department said the Department is always keen to catch up with the development in technology as far as providing information services and also to enhance the competency of its employees by qualifying them whatever needed for achieving the targets.
He said 43 employees including librarians and library services administrators participated in the courses.
Eraidi said the library members can now get benefited from the database on Islamic studies from Oxford, which is considered to be one of the important source of documents related to religion, Islamic world and history. The database, which provides the best information that helps to understand Islamic history and culture, is meant for students, researchers and Islamic research centres. This database also includes contributions from major religious scholars in Islamic history, faith, ideology, politics and culture. The database is subjected to constant updating.
The libraries also provide reference database on business from Oxford, which is one of the most used database by students and teachers. It includes a set of more than 175 titles and is also updated regularly. Illustrated Oxford dictionaries are also added to it.
AbdulRahman Ibrahim, Head of Technical Operations Unit said this step comes as a culmination of the plan of Dubai Public Libraries Department aimed at placing the best database that is used most by its members. This database will add up to the already existing database, EBSCO that covers more than 8,400 e-magazines, 4,506 court magazines, and Ebrary that contains more than 42,000 e-books, in addition to the Arabic database, AskZad that contains more than 16,000 books and university papers in Arabic in addition to more than 400 periodicals.