Disaster recovery and managing security need to be built into IT virtualisation technology from the start, according to research firm IDC.

The organisation's latest report, the Asia/Pacific 'Continuum' End User Survey 2007, indicates that three of the top four management features or tools used in virtualised servers in the Asia/Pacific region are "directly connected to business continuity and disaster recovery issues".

These tools are security, maintenance, and systems recovery and backup/disaster recovery.

IDC identifies that new challenges will emerge for data centre managers as virtualised structures become more prevalent, as they are forced to comply with various security arrangements.

"The results clearly show that users have come to expect a suite of security and performance management tools to be available as they adopt virtualization technology for their data centres," said IDC's Willie Low.

"It is therefore pertinent that business continuity, disaster recovery and security management are built into the equation right at the very beginning when adopting virtualisation, especially as enterprises embark on their plans to upgrade to a next generation platform for their data centres."

Research for Connect in 2007 found that 88 per cent of UK businesses were interested in Disaster Recovery systems primarily to protect their critical applications and data