London, UK, 11th December 2012 - A recent Acronis survey* of more than 375 resellers across the UK has rated deduplication and archiving as the two most important technologies to help companies cut IT costs and become more efficient.
The survey placed deduplication and archiving equal first, with less than 2% difference between the two. Both technologies, which are central to any organisation's storage optimisation strategy, were rated more highly than cloud, backup, data protection and virtualisation.
The economic downturn is placing increasing pressure on UK businesses to slash IT spending. IDC[1] report that the world's information is doubling every two years, in 2011 the world created a staggering 1.8 zettabytes and they predict that by 2020 the world will generate 50 times that amount of information. Big Data creation calls for efficient storage solutions, technologies that help optimise or extend the life of an organisation's existing capital investments appear to be gaining popularity.
According to Alan Laing, Vice President EMEA, Acronis: "While other new technologies such as cloud and virtualisation are known to reduce long-term capital costs, technologies that immediately optimise efficiencies across existing storage infrastructure are becoming much more in vogue."
Chris Roche, Managing Director of ACUTEC Limited concurs with Laing's view, stating: "Although this could be seen as a knee-jerk reaction, deduplication and archiving help reduce storage costs which makes good sense in the short-term. That said, once the economy picks up, resellers should expect a surge in more strategic long-term technology spending, and be ready to deal with it."
Laing believes that deduplication in particular is becoming a de facto element of any storage optimisation strategy, and thousands of companies are reclaiming swathes of existing storage capacity as a result. The efficiency benefits are further compounded when old data is migrated off primary storage to an archive, freeing additional capacity to support the business.
Laing concluded: "Together, deduplication and archiving make a strong case for squeezing the most out of an existing storage investment. We'll continue to work closely with our channel partners to help them optimise their business around this growing opportunity."
1 IDC Digital Universe Study, sponsored by EMC, June 2011, www.emc.com/about/news/press/2011/20110628-01.htm
* The survey is an annual barometer of Acronis' partner's perceptions and vision of market trends. Over 1,100 Acronis EMEA partners across 10 European countries, including Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Netherlands were surveyed in March 2012.
Acronis is a global cyber protection company that provides natively integrated cybersecurity, data protection, and endpoint management for managed service providers (MSPs), small and medium businesses (SMBs), and enterprise IT departments. Acronis solutions are highly efficient and designed to identify, prevent, detect, respond, remediate, and recover from modern cyberthreats with minimal downtime, ensuring data integrity and business continuity. Acronis offers the most comprehensive security solution on the market for MSPs with its unique ability to meet the needs of diverse and distributed IT environments.
A Swiss company founded in Singapore in 2003, Acronis has 45 locations across the globe. Acronis Cyber Protect is available in 26 languages in 150 countries and is used by over 20,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses. Learn more at www.acronis.com.