Virtualisation uptake in Europe is greater than in the US, aided by stricter personal data privacy controls, according to Zeus Networks.

The network vendor said that in Europe virtualisation was helping companies to secure their sensitive information more effectively, because is users log on remotely information is only stored at the data centre.

"Europeans care about privacy, and the US government has pretty much sold privacy to the highest bidder," Dave Asprey of Zeus told Vnunet.com.

"The privacy regulations in Europe mean that virtualisation is a great way to provide added security because the data never leaves the data centre. In the US it is probably on the laptop which someone stole from your car and then sold on eBay."

Research firm IDC believes that the adoption of virtualisation in data centres is mainly being driven by business continuity and availability.

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