Information? …It’s Gonna Cost Ya

By Stuart Beattie | July 16, 2012 | Leave a Comment

It has nothing to do with the size of your inbox or shared drive or whether your competitive edge stems from a specific design blueprint or a secret ingredient. It could be that you have and need to keep reams and reams of customer information or maybe you simply have unique insight into a few key clients. It all amounts to information that defines your business. And it’s clear that companies value it – we know this from the results of Symantec’s recent State of Information survey that shows companies are spending a total of £714 billion[i] a year on storage infrastructure, security, compliance and access[ii].

In fact, the survey revealed that digital information makes up 49 percent of an organisation’s total value so the loss of information is actually worth a lot more to a business – actually it would not be an exaggeration to say that you can’t really put a price on it. It is after all what keeps you in business. One IT manager at a large engineering firm said when asked about the consequences of losing the enterprise’s information: “We would have to fold our operations for at least a couple of years before we’d come back again.”

On average, the survey shows that enterprises spend £25 million on information, while SMEs spend £215,000. However, the cost per employee for SMEs is a lot higher at £2,383, versus £2,140 for enterprise. For example, a typical 50 employee small business spends £119,155 on information management, whereas a typical large enterprise with 2,500 employees would spend £5.3 million.

It’s clear the consequences of losing business information would be disastrous. Respondents in the UK highlighted the impact of data loss to their business including lost customers (48 percent), damage to reputation and brand (36 percent), increased expenses (36 percent) and decreased revenue (35 percent).

When you look at it like this, it’s money well spent.

[i] Symantec State of Information Survey 2012

[ii] This cost is broken down into four key areas:

- Storage infrastructure £201 billion*

- Security £210 billion*

- Compliance £192 billion*

- Access £76 billion*

*rounded to nearest billion, converted from US dollars using the current rate of 1.54.

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