If IT departments are any indication, disaster recovery is a major focus for businesses – almost 50 percent of respondents in the Quorum Technology Disaster Recovery survey indicated 11 to 25 percent of their companies’ IT budget is allocated to disaster recovery this year.

The majority of respondents (33.8 percent) indicate that they believe natural disasters are the most common cause of IT downtime (followed by human error at 24.8 percent, software error or maintenance at 21.7 percent and hardware failure at 19.7 percent).  However, a recent study disproved that belief, noting that human error and changes in hardware, software or systems are more likely to cause system downtime than any hurricane or tornado.

Respondents tended to prefer hardware-based systems, whether for backup data or recovery of data, systems or applications. The survey tallied 48.4 percent of respondents’ companies using hardware-based data backup systems, with cloud-based systems trailing at 27.7 percent. Twenty-two percent of respondents’ companies rely on hybrid systems, and 1.9 percent have no backup system at all.

“The majority of respondents (40.9 percent) have a hardware-based recovery system in place. But for this question, hybrid systems inch ahead of cloud-based systems (27 percent vs. 26.4 percent), while 5.7 percent have no recovery system in place. The majority of those using a backup and/or recovery system have infinite confidence in their solution: 67.9 percent would feel just fine erasing their data, knowing it can be restored from a backup,” according to the report.