Source: cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com. Original research published by Dell EMC, 2018/2019.
Overview: The Global Data Protection Index
Dell EMC released the results of its third annual Global Data Protection Index, a large-scale survey examining how organizations manage and protect their data. The study surveyed 2,200 IT decision-makers from public and private organizations with 250 or more employees, spanning 18 countries and 11 industries. The findings provide a detailed view of data protection maturity, the impact of cloud adoption, and the growing risks posed by data loss and system disruption.
Key headline figures from the India-focused results include a 130% increase in data volumes managed by Indian organizations between 2016 and 2018, and a nearly 50 percentage point jump in data protection “adopters” over the same period.
Explosive Data Growth Is Outpacing Protection Strategies
The Index highlights a dramatic rise in the average volume of data managed by organizations:
| Metric | India (2016) | India (2018) | Global (2016) | Global (2018) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg. data managed | 2.79 PB | 6.43 PB | 1.45 PB | 9.70 PB |
Despite this growth, awareness of data’s business value is high: 93% of Indian respondents and 92% of global respondents acknowledged the potential value of their data. The challenge lies in translating that awareness into effective protection practices—most respondents admitted they struggle to adequately protect the data they hold.
Disruption Incidents Are Frequent and Expensive
The volume and business criticality of data make disruption incidents increasingly costly. The research found that more than three-quarters (76%) of respondents—both in India and globally—experienced at least one type of disruption in a 12-month period. More concerning, approximately 30% of Indian businesses (27% globally) reported they were unable to recover data using their existing data protection solutions.
Around 85% of Indian respondents use at least two data protection vendors, compared to 75% worldwide. Among organizations using multiple vendors, the most common disruption types experienced in India were:
- Unplanned system downtime (51%)
- Data loss (36%)
- Local disaster affecting data access for an entire site or group (34%)
The Real Cost of Downtime and Data Loss
While unplanned downtime is more prevalent, data loss carries a significantly higher financial impact. According to the survey:
- Indian organizations that experienced downtime averaged 29 hours of downtime over 12 months, at a cost of approximately $958,583—compared to a global average of 20 hours costing around $526,845.
- Indian respondents lost an average of 3.31 terabytes of data, with an associated cost of approximately $1,287,788—versus a global average of 2.13 terabytes at $995,613.
These figures underscore a growing recognition—95% in India and 81% globally—that organizations need to take data protection more seriously, particularly for data categories with the highest monetary value.
Challenges Surrounding Data Protection
Despite the growing urgency, implementation remains difficult. The research found that 94% of Indian respondents (95% globally) faced at least one significant challenge related to data protection. The top three challenges cited in India were:
- Lack of data protection solutions for emerging technologies
- Inability to track and protect all data due to the growth of DevOps and cloud environments
- Complexity of configuring and operating data protection software and hardware
For organizations struggling to find solutions for newer technologies, the gaps are significant:
- 71% in India could not find adequate data protection solutions for AI and machine learning workloads.
- 58% struggled to protect cloud-native applications.
- 46% lacked solutions for robotic process automation (RPA) data.
Despite these challenges, confidence in future readiness varies sharply by region: only 32% of Indian respondents believe their current data protection solutions will meet all future business needs, compared to just 16% globally—suggesting Indian organizations may be more optimistic, or have different expectations, about their existing tooling.
Cloud Is Reshaping Data Protection Infrastructure
Public cloud adoption has grown significantly among Indian enterprises. According to the Index, public cloud now accounts for 44% of the total IT environment in Indian organizations (up from 34% in 2016), compared to a global figure of 40% in 2018 (up from 28% in 2016).
Notably, 100% of Indian organizations reported using public cloud as part of their data protection infrastructure (98% globally). The top use cases for cloud-based data protection in India include:
- Backup/snapshot services to protect workloads built on public cloud using modern application architectures (62%)
- Cloud-enabled versions of on-premises data protection software to protect public cloud workloads (59%)
- Backup/snapshot services to protect workloads developed using legacy application architectures (52%)
These findings point to a hybrid strategy: organizations are not simply migrating to cloud-native backup tools but are also extending traditional on-premises data protection approaches into cloud environments.
Regulatory Compliance: Confidence Varies Widely
Regulatory compliance is emerging as a key driver of data protection investment. The Index found that 72% of Indian businesses felt very confident that their current data protection infrastructure and processes are compliant with regional regulations—a stark contrast to just 35% of global respondents who expressed the same level of confidence.
This gap may reflect differences in the maturity or stringency of regional regulatory frameworks, or differences in how “compliance” is defined and assessed across markets.
Industry Perspective
“With the rapid change in industry dynamics and the advent of newer technologies, it has become imperative for organizations to focus on the practical application of emerging technologies like AI and IoT to accelerate their digital transformation journey. The key in organizations’ digital transformation journey is the generation and analysis of data. Businesses in India are seeing better potential in the value of data and are monetizing it more than their global counterparts.”
— Ripu Bajwa, Director & General Manager, Data Protection Solutions, Dell EMC India
Key Takeaways for DevOps and IT Teams
- Data volumes are growing faster than protection strategies can keep up. Teams should audit their current backup and recovery coverage against actual data growth rates.
- Multi-vendor complexity is a real risk. Organizations using two or more data protection vendors report higher rates of downtime and data loss—consolidation or tighter integration may reduce exposure.
- Cloud-native and AI/ML workloads remain under-protected. If your stack includes containerized apps, serverless functions, or ML pipelines, verify that your data protection tooling explicitly supports these architectures.
- Regulatory compliance cannot be assumed. The wide gap between Indian and global confidence levels suggests that self-assessed compliance may not reflect actual readiness for audits or incidents.
- Recovery testing matters as much as backup configuration. With 30% of organizations unable to recover data using existing tools, regular recovery drills are essential—not optional.