How Far? (Continued)

A new survey of business continuity executives suggests that one in five enterprise companies is considering putting more distance between their primary and backup data centers. The survey by the British web portal Continuity Central of more than 150 IT execs found that 62 percent of US companies had formal policies on the distance between their data centers, with the minimum ranging from 5 miles to 300 miles. The number for British companies was slightly lower at 52 percent.

"The policies of US companies were generally based upon much longer distances between primary and recovery facilties than UK ones, mainly due to the US's higher probability of extreme environmental disasters," the survey noted.

Significantly, 21.3 percent of respondents said they planned to move their secondary disaster recovery facilities further away from their primary site. Another 4.9 percent said they wanted to move their secondary site closer to the primary site, while 11.5 percent said they wanted to move away from using third-party suppliers and develop a company-owned recovery facility.

Such reader surveys can sometimes yield diverse results. But the numbers suggest that as many as a third of companies participating in the survey were considering some type of change in their data center facilities. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there's been a marked pickup in activity among corporate users investigating data center space. That facility shopping isn't always generating quick deals. But if the Continuity Central survey results reflect corporate intentions, there's plenty of data center deals out there yet.


Read the full survey in PDF format.