Two Thirds of UK Companies Still in the Dark About De-Dupe

According to a recent survey, the majority of UK businesses are not employing data deduplication despite its clear benefits.
 
91% of the 105 IT resellers surveyed recently by Acronis state that less than half of their customers are employing deduplication, with two thirds (62%) stating that the minority (under 10%) of their customers are using the technology.
 
A third see the cost of deduplication as the biggest barrier to entry, while nearly 100% of those questioned (98%) stated that if deduplication was affordable then their customers would invest in it, highlighting the misconception surrounding the affordability of deduplication solutions.
 
Kevin Moreau, general manager of Acronis UK & Ireland, said: “Data deduplication is currently a hot topic in the storage industry, but many customers feel like it is out of their reach. It can cut storage requirements by up to 90% by eliminating replicate files or identical blocks of data, therefore dramatically reducing costs. However, deduplication is often perceived as an expensive technology to adopt and implement, reserved for large organisations and usually requiring additional hardware.”
 
With over a third of partners stating that their customers do not know enough about deduplication to deploy the technology, there is also a clear need for the market to educate end users about the cost, and storage savings it can bring to an organisation. In addition, deduplication can save network bandwidth as the amount of data transferred over a network to a target storage location can be cut by 10 to 20 times – especially relevant to SMBs who sometimes have limited bandwidth.

This survey was taken from a sample of 105 IT Resellers in May 2009.
 
Acronis has recently launched Acronis Backup & Recovery 10, a portfolio of disaster recovery products with modular software deduplication offered at one of the industry’s lowest price points. It offers data deduplication without the need to purchase additional hardware, allowing SMBs access to the technology.