Disaster recovery spending not a top budget priority

Pro

3 November 2011

Organisations continue to spend on business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR), but BCDR is still not a budget top priority, according to newly-released data from Forrester Research.
 
Forrester researcher Stephanie Balaouras, along with Laura Koetzle and Nicholas M. Hayes, said a 2010 IT budget survey found 32% of enterprises had planned to increase spending on business continuity and disaster recovery by 5%. However, follow up in 2011 found BCDR budgets hovered at previously levels, around 6% of spending, despite what researchers called "a string of devastating and high profile disasters in 2010 and early 2011."
 
"BCDR is not all about natural disaster preparedness, but usually, high profile catastrophes like Japan’s earthquake and tsunami stir business and IT executives to spend more to be prepared," the report states.
 
Economic uncertainty hampers BCDR
Researchers surveyed more than 2700 IT executives in Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US and said the likely culprit in stalled BCDR spending is the continuing economic uncertainty.

"Even in the best of economic times, it’s difficult to build the business case for an initiative like BCDR that’s primarily about cost avoidance rather than return on investment-in tough economic times, it’s almost impossible," the report states. "With the threat of a double-dip recession on the rise in Europe and North America, now is a good time to understand what makes up the BCDR budget and what you can do to keep BCDR on the priority list."
 
That report points to figures from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), which found economic damages from natural disasters in 2010 accounted for $123.9 billion (€90.1 billion), an increase of 160% compared with 2009 and above the annual average for the period between 2000 to 2009.
 
Other priorities
BCDR took a backseat to priorities such as consolidation, business intelligence, and virtualisation, the report claims. This is in contrast to 2010, when BCDR was the top priority for small and medium-size businesses and the second-highest priority for enterprises.
 
It is not that enterprises feel that BCDR is less important, said researchers. In fact, in 2010, 64% of IT decision-makers and influencers reported that BCDR was a high or critical priority; in 2011, that number was 60%, only a minor decrease. The issue is that enterprises feel that consolidation, intelligence, and virtualisation are even more important. Consolidation, business intelligence, and virtualisation all help to reduce IT costs, improve business and IT responsiveness, and increase flexibility – all of which are critical during tough economic times, according to researchers.

IDG News Service

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