The most popular port of call was an independent consultant (18%) followed by an entirely new IT provider (17%), whilst a specialist disaster recovery company was the favoured option for 10% of IT managers. The remaining 3% would use another unspecified option.
This suggests that the disaster recovery market is exceptionally open to the channel, with customers currently spreading their loyalty across a wide range of options. The research coincides with the roll out of Timico’s Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution, which is available for re-sale in the channel.
DRaaS is a cloud-based and scalable service which negates the need to replicate a secondary environment – making it much cheaper and simpler to deploy than traditional disaster recovery services.
Darren Hilton, Director of Partner Services at Timico, said: “Our research seems to suggest that there is still a lot of confusion surrounding disaster recovery – with customers unsure of who to turn to. This means that existing IT and virtualisation providers could be missing out on the opportunity to provide additional services to existing customers.
“There is still a perception that disaster recovery is very expensive – and a bit of a nightmare to implement. However, by using a cloud-based system, testing and updates can be done quickly and cheaply. Everyone knows the risks of not investing in disaster recovery – and now it’s easier than ever to make sure your business is adequately protected.”
Those surveyed were asked to select the key priorities to consider when choosing a Disaster Recovery partner. 34% of respondents highlighted flexibility among their choices, service level agreements (32%), support (22.67%) and resilience (18%). A further 15% said online support tools were a key selling point and 11% appreciate a UK-based provider.
The most popular virtualisation platform providers were VMware, with just under 50% of those surveyed using it, whilst XenServer and Hyper-V were both relied upon by just over 20% of respondents.