Symantec Asks XChange Audience: How Long Can You Afford To Be Offline?

"From the standpoint of the users, it's mostly about me and my stuff," said Neils Johnson, principal evangelist at Symantec. "And, channel partners need to be ready to address the issues around availability and security."

During his presentation from the main stage during Monday's XChange lineup, Johnson cited statistics indicating that mobile data usage has increased 4,000 percent over the last three years, as part of a rapid increase in data being generated by companies of all sizes.

[Related: CRN's Exclusive Coverage Of XChange 2012 ]

Meanwhile, on the cloud side of the equation, Johnson cited security as one of the fundamental issues inhibiting adoption.

"When was the last time you took your wife out for the evening and left the kids at home with a babysitter you had just barely vetted?" he asked, half in jest. "For many executives, that's exactly what you're doing when you push them [customers] towards cloud adoption before they are truly ready to go there. They need to know that the crown jewels of their business are protected."

Johnson further explained that this phenomenon is one of the drivers behind private cloud adoption, as opposed to public cloud adoption. "They want to know what the cloud feels like before they go any further," he said.

Across the board, Johnson claims that Symantec recognized nearly a million new virus definitions every day, and that these threats pose a hugely important threat to customers. He urged people in attendance to ask themselves one critical question: "How long can your company afford to be offline? If you don't want to tell me, that's OK. But, if you don't know the answer to this question, you're already in trouble because this information is crucial to assessing your needs in the areas of backup and disaster recovery.

Symantec is at XChange this week, promoting the company's offerings in security, DLP, backup and DR.

PUBLISHED AUG. 20, 2012