Databarracks' latest annual Data Health Check survey show that a majority of UK companies envisage an increase in data storage in the coming year. 87% of those surveyed admitted expecting some storage growth in the next 12 months, with more than half expecting to store up to 50% more data than the amount stored in the previous year.

"In the current economic climate the tendency is to cut expenditure wherever possible. Despite the global downturn, it appears that companies are still expecting to see fairly sharp increases in the amount of data that they need to protect, this is set to remain fairly difficult with the rate of data growth and data centers struggling with capacity" says Peter Groucutt, Databarracks' Managing Director. "Another interesting area that the survey has highlighted is the growing interest in virtualisation as a cheaper way of ensuring that IT Disaster Recovery costs remain manageable. Our own internal research shows that nearly 70% of IT Managers want to have conversations about virtualisation and most of those are interested in Virtual Disaster Recovery as an alternative way of looking after key servers and applications in their networks."

The Data Health Check Survey is the largest and most comprehensive survey in the industry focused purely on backup and recovery technologies and practices. The annual Data Health Check survey completed by more than 1,000 companies of all sizes and across all sectors provides a comprehensive overview of data backup and recovery technologies and practices. The survey highlights trends in data backup, IT business continuity and IT Disaster Recovery technologies and their usage.

A full report can be downloaded here