From confidential customer information, to intellectual property, to financial transactions, organizations possess massive amounts of information which enables them to be competitive and efficient, and stay in business. And the cost of storing these data globally amounts to nearly $1.1 trillion, reports Symantec’s "State of Information" survey.

Worldwide organizations hold about 2.2 zettabytes of data and this digital information makes up 49 percent of an organization's total value. "The same information that helps the organizations to cater their customer more efficiently can at times become a major liability if it is not properly protected. With its increasing value and rising cost, successful companies will find ways to more effectively protect their information and unleash the productivity it can bring," states Francis deSouza, Group President, Enterprise Products and Services, Symantec.

SMBs on average have 563 terabytes of data, compared with the average enterprise that has 100,000 terabytes, and is expected to grow 67 percent over the next year for enterprises and 178 percent for SMBs. Where enterprises spend $38 million annually on an average on information, SMBs spend $332,000. However, if an enterprise loses business information, it might need to fold its operations for a couple of years.

With so much at stake, companies struggle to protect their information. In last year alone, about 69 percent of businesses experienced some form of information loss for different reasons, 69 percent had confidential information exposed outside of the company, and 31 percent have experienced compliance failures related to information.

All these risks have forced the businesses to spend more than necessary on storing and protecting their information. One of the key issues identified by 30 percent of businesses is information spread out which often gets duplicated elsewhere.