Teneros

ApplicationContinuity.org Survey Reveals Widespread Vulnerability to Email Outages

Survey Also Shows That Many Companies Fail to Plan for Disaster Recovery

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — January 24, 2008 — An ApplicationContinuity.org survey, analyzed and compiled by ResearchCorp.org, reveals new research indicating that despite advances in the use of data backup, archiving, and protection technology, companies of all sizes remain vulnerable to costly and damaging email outages by trusting their messaging infrastructure to a single server, by not having a high-availability solution to provide continuity in the event of a local server or technology failure, or by not having a disaster recovery plan in place.

The study, conducted online by ApplicationContinuity.org and sponsored by Teneros, Inc, surveyed 434 IT professionals responsible for email continuity in small (0-99), medium (100-999), and large (1000+) enterprises. The goal was to determine whether companies are prepared to deliver email continuity, particularly for Microsoft® Exchange, and whether companies have a plan in place to secure email communication during a local or site-wide failure or downtime event.

The survey group includes a wide range of industry verticals, with financial services, high tech and manufacturing accounting for the top three represented. Ninety-seven percent of respondents are based in the United States, and 60 percent use Microsoft® Exchange, again confirming Microsoft’s market leadership position in the corporate email market.

Key Findings

• Less than half of the respondents have a reactive disaster recovery plan in place.
• Only 46 percent of respondents have currently implemented a high-availability solution of some type, and the definition varies widely to include data backup solutions that do not deliver high availability of business-critical applications such as email.
• Only 21 percent of respondents have implemented a disaster avoidance strategy.
• Twenty-nine percent of mid-sized companies are operating with only a single Exchange server, and have no application continuity plan in place.
• More than 50 percent of the responding companies that have a continuity solution in place for Exchange are only backing up files or file systems and are not backing up the Exchange application for an immediate recovery in the event of a server failure or site outage.

The survey also looks at migration plans for Exchange 2007, as well as industry-specific requirements for compliance or legal discovery solutions.

“Given the excellent messaging continuity solutions that have emerged in the past few years, it’s alarming to see how many companies still aren’t proactively implementing the right mix of technologies to keep their email systems up and running around the clock,” said Craig Stouffer of ResearchCorp.org. “Whether this is a budget issue or an awareness issue is unclear, but for many companies the hard truth is that much more could— and should—be done to protect them from experiencing the devastating effects that email downtime can have on their bottom line.”

“Companies clearly recognize the mission-criticality of email, with 95% of surveyed companies viewing it as essential to business operations,” said Eric Burgener, senior analyst with The Taneja Group. “Additional survey findings on cost, impact, and frequency of email outages underline strongly that email is a system where proactive disaster avoidance, rather than just disaster recovery, will pay high dividends.”

A full copy of the report is available at www.applicationcontinuity.org and www.teneros.com/infocenter.

About ApplicationContinuity.org

ApplicationContinuity.org exists as a virtual community that seeks to bring together information, ideas and opinions from interested persons and organizations. ApplicationContinuity.org publishes information on application survivability and reliability, with a primary focus on messaging and email continuity, telecommunications and network continuity along with information on strategies to ensure that critical applications operate to an acceptable level of performance. More information is available at www.applicationcontinuity.org.

About ResearchCorp.

Based in San Jose, Calif., ResearchCorp. provides custom market analysis to assist technology firms in understanding their customers strategically for improved product and marketing decisions and results. More information is available at www.researchcorp.org.

About Teneros

Founded in 2003, Teneros has pioneered a new product category that assures continuity of operations for the mission-critical Microsoft® applications fueling corporations worldwide – the Teneros Application Continuity Appliances™. Funded by Advanced Equities Financial Corp., Goldman Sachs, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Sevin Rosen Funds, and STAR Ventures, the company produces plug-&-go™ business continuity appliances that assure 99.99%-99.999% uptime of Microsoft® infrastructure applications.

Teneros is an Advanced Infrastructure Solutions Microsoft® Gold Partner and is the recipient of the coveted 2007 Microsoft® Partner of the Year Award, OEM Hardware Solutions, Device Manufacturing. Teneros was selected as CRN’s 2007 Emerging Tech Dynamo and was honored by AlwaysOn as an AO 100 Private Company Award winner in 2006 and 2007. The company is headquartered at 321 East Evelyn Ave in Mountain View, Calif., 94041. More information is available at www.teneros.com.

Teneros Press Contact:

Cynthia Harris
(650) 520-8343 (Mobile)
charris@prstrategygroup.com

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