BOSTON, April 28, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Carbonite, Inc. (Nasdaq:CARB), a leading provider of cloud and hybrid business continuity solutions for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), today announced the results of a 2015 Business Continuity Study done in conjunction with IDC, titled "The Growth Opportunity for SMB Cloud and Hybrid Business Continuity." In the survey of 700 SMBs worldwide, IDC found that 81 percent of SMBs currently using business continuity solutions are considering improvements to their strategies with 72 percent expected to increase investments in business continuity over the next 12 to 24 months.
Download IDC White Paper The Growth Opportunity for SMB Cloud and Hybrid Business Continuity at: http://cbnt.it/1OnZodU
"Small businesses are facing operational challenges stemming from persistent data growth, budgetary constraints and the need to produce more with less, which is driving adoption of cloud computing, data analytics and mobility similar to their enterprise counterparts," said Laura DuBois, Program Vice President Storage, eDiscovery and IG at IDC. "To address these challenges, SMBs have signaled a need and intention to drive material spending on business continuity in the next 12 to 24 months. With more than 6.2 million small and mid-size businesses in the U.S., and 78 million small and mid-size businesses worldwide, the SMB Business Continuity market presents a wealth of opportunity for providers that can address the SMB's need for cloud-enabled, feature-rich, holistic solutions that are cost-effective and easy to own and maintain."
The IDC white paper found that a typical SMB relies on three to four different solutions for maintaining business continuity, commonly with different solutions for different applications. Currently, 65 percent of SMBs leverage on-premise data backup; however, SMBs are increasingly turning to cloud or hybrid strategies to achieve business continuity and growth is anticipated in the Backup-as-a-Service and Recovery as-a-Service segments, which are only 29 percent and 21 percent penetrated today.
The threat of downtime is a major driver of investment, with more than 75 percent of SMBs citing it as the single biggest driver for purchasing business continuity solutions. While unexpected and unplanned downtime can cause damage to a business' reputation with customers, partners and suppliers, the effects on productivity and profits is even more immediate. The average estimated cost for an hour of downtime for an SMB ranges from $8,220 to $25,600, and typically an unplanned event can span for as long as 24 hours – which could be devastating to a small business.
While legacy business continuity solutions require on-premise hardware, perpetual software licenses or personnel to manage backup or replication jobs, modern cloud-enabled methods are friendlier to SMBs with limited resources. Today's SMBs are in need of solutions that:
- Fit with SMB budget: According to IDC's 2015 Business Continuity Study, the majority of SMBs report an annual IT budget of up to $20,000 and those who invest will allocate up to 14% of their budget to business continuity, representing an annual spend of $2,800.
- Reduce Complexity: With three to four different business continuity products in use, SMBs need simple, easy-to-deploy and manage business continuity services.
- Offer Enterprise-Grade Features: SMBs face many of the same challenges as larger enterprises when it comes to recovery time objectives (RTO), tiered storage and compliance.
"When it comes to disaster recovery, the stakes are higher for small businesses," said Mohamad Ali, President and CEO, of Carbonite. "SMBs realize that a business continuity solution can mean the difference between staying in business or losing everything they've worked for, and the data shows they are investing accordingly. According to the IDC survey, the majority of those who invest are spending as much as $2,800 a year. With 6.2 million SMBs in just the U.S., the market opportunity for business continuity exceeds $17 billion. At Carbonite, we understand the unique needs of small businesses and provide business continuity solutions that combine the power of enterprise technology with the simplicity of consumer products at an affordable fixed cost that maximizes their investment."
To read more on this research, you can download the full white paper here. To learn about Carbonite's Business Continuity solutions for SMBs, please visit http://www.carbonite.com/online-business-backup-plans.
About Carbonite
Carbonite (Nasdaq:CARB) is a leading provider of cloud and hybrid business continuity solutions for small and midsized businesses. Together with our partners, we support more than 1.5 million individuals and small businesses around the world who rely on us to ensure their important data is protected, available and useful. To learn more about Carbonite, our partner program, and our award-winning backup, recovery & archiving solutions, visit us at Carbonite.com.