Experts now believe that investment in data backup and disaster recovery from businesses around the world is set to increase in the coming years. This is in spite of evidence which suggests that IT budgets are going to be frozen or squeezed as businesses struggle to cope after the recession.
Analysts at ABI Research have suggested in a new study that by the year 2015 over £26 billion will be spent annually on disaster recovery solutions. This is nearly double the level of investment made in 2009, which just tipped the scales at over £16 billion.
ABI’s Larry Fisher said that the drastic increase would be initiated by the growing reliance on electronic data storage and retrieval, which was becoming a common requirement across all businesses.
Mr Fisher explained that government regulations require that a majority of larger organisations adhere to the rules governing proper practice in data management and security and that this necessity would drive greater revenues into the disaster recovery industry.
Mr Fisher also said that although not all businesses were required to protect their data properly by legislation, there was a proven desire amongst the most progressive firms to safeguard their customer data, as well as to protect themselves from disasters of all kinds.
The cost of proper disaster recovery services is falling and the systems are now easier to manage than ever before. Virtualisation and cloud computing are playing a significant part in this process according to experts.
Mr Fisher warned that vendors of backup solutions and disaster recovery systems would need to make their products easy for the average businessperson to understand. He said that acceptance of the technologies on offer would only come with an uncomplicated idea as to how advanced concepts such as the cloud actually work.
The threats that face businesses with data storage requirements are diverse and ever-changing. As a result, disaster recovery in the digital age is becoming widely accepted as an essential part of any business continuity plan. If the experts are right, most businesses will be allocating much more money to ensuring that they are properly protected in the coming months and years.
