Data management will become a priority for more businesses next year.
More businesses are set to deploy offsite backup storage techniques as the importance of saving vital information in a secure way becomes more apparent.
This is the view of Eoin Blacklock, managing director of a data management firm, who said 2012 will make the year of data storage and see a trend for firms finding ways to store, secure, access and manage their important information.
"The act of storing data on USB sticks will slowly decrease in 2012 as businesses wake up to the risks associated with these devices. Indeed, a significant number of USBs that are used will likely end up lost or stolen," he posited.
"On the other hand, virtualisation of servers and desktops will increase as companies need to adjust their storage systems, as the amount of data produced by businesses continues to grow exponentially. It will become impossible for service providers to continue to manage storage requirements with traditional local storage."
This will force evolution to disaster recovery solutions, which could see more companies backing up files to the cloud.
Mr Blacklock believes this will affect businesses of all sizes as they seek to find "flexible, scalable and affordable storage options" that can grow in line with their operations, meaning data backup will be high on the agenda for 2012.
"Tape is becoming increasingly unreliable and is falling out of favour with many organisations, and businesses are looking for more secure, reliable, online solutions – instead of this 60-year-old technology," he added.
Meanwhile, broadcaster ITV has announced plans to build a new data storage and management platform so that it can manage all content digitally, CIO.co.uk reported.
The network’s director of strategy Andrew Ioannou said that the move marks the continued progress of ITV’s transformation plan and a further step towards "a fully tapeless environment".