94% of CA European Partners Anticipate Spending on Recovery Solutions in 2010

New research from CA, Inc. reveals that channel partners are positive about spending and commercial opportunities in the European recovery management market this year. Almost all (94%) of CA partners anticipate spending on recovery solutions including backup, business continuity and disaster recovery – in 2010 will at least be equal to 2009 levels. A significant 41% expect expenditure to be higher than last year.

"Recovery management is a growing, dynamic and exciting market to be operating in", said Chris Ross, Vice President EMEA & Asia-Pacific Recovery Management & Data Modeling Business Unit. "As businesses emerge from the recession, data and recovery management remains a top IT priority. We see that companies are faced with increasingly complex IT environments to guard and as a result are looking for new ways of meet these growing data protection needs. This represents a huge business opportunity for our channel partners across Europe".

CA’s partner study also explored cloud computing and utility IT services in response to the ever-growing interest from companies around the adoption of cloud. Some 57% of partners say that their customers are interested in cloud storage, or backup-as-a-service, as an option for their storage requirements.

In addition, data deduplication, a method of eliminating multiple copies of the same data, was highlighted as another hot opportunity for the channel. More than three quarters (76%) of CA’s partners claim that this technology is an important consideration for their customers when buying a backup solution. Once considered a business luxury and only afforded by large enterprise, data deduplication is now integrated into cost-effective solutions for small and medium businesses and, as a result, they are keen to take advantage of it.

The research shows that companies today recognise that smooth IT operations and data protection are critical to their success – when asked how long they thought their customers would be able to operate without access to critical applications, two thirds of CA’s partners estimate one hour while 18% say just 10 minutes. In today’s economic environment, businesses more than ever cannot afford downtime so it is paramount they have business continuity and disaster recovery in place.

"Overall the research is extremely positive for the recovery management industry. Because our partners are close to the issues that matter to European business, it provides a good indication of the trends in this technology area. With cost pressure and the recession, many businesses, especially smaller ones, have previously shied away from investing in protecting their critical data. As a result, in some companies data protection policies and best practice have been neglected", Ross continued.

"It is clear that there are some exciting revenue opportunities for the channel to capitalise on. CA is welcoming new recovery management resellers to its partner community and is making it easy for them to further develop their business reach and increase revenues with CA’s award winning solutions – as well as giving them a quick path to access to channel program benefits. CA has a proven superior class of technology and a leading position in the recovery management growing market, and we are looking for the best resellers to increase our common business together," he concluded.

Survey Methodology
CA surveyed 928 of CA’s partners across EMEA in December 2009 and January 2010. Respondents completed an online survey. Countries surveyed across the region: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Middle East, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK & Ireland.