According to industry guesstimates, the amount of data traveling in laptops could contain as much as 70 percent of a company s information assets. Most of it is at risk, because mobile executives generally are not backing up their data as frequently as they should. People say they don t have time, says Stephen Archuleta, vice president of new products for US West Communications Corp., a local exchange carrier and Internet service provider based in Denver. Despite a profusion of remote access, data replication, data synchronization, and data backup technologies deployed by U. S. businesses, employees don t always want to be captive to their IT organizations.
Horror stories are legion about lost data due to system crashes or stolen laptops.
Although employees generally are conscious of the importance of the data they have, they continue to lack the self-discipline to do regular backups, say industry analysts. Popular excuses IT managers hear include such offerings as He s always in a hurry, facing a deadline or he tempts Providence by telling himself, Tomorrow s soon enough. This mindset cuts across all kinds of companies and industries. Even those high-tech system integrators who sell and install sophisticated backup solutions to protect your organization s information assets sometimes forget to back up their own data properly. David Sykes, founder and president of Andataco Inc., a manufacturer of networked storage subsystems headquartered in San Diego, candidly admits that up until early 1998 he had problems getting his own mobile workforce of 125 sales and engineering executives to backup data.