Over a half of company bosses are concerned that they have not got enough IT staff working for them, it has been claimed.

The IT Governance Global Status Report 2008, conducted by the IT Governance Institute (ITGI) found that 58 per cent of chief executive officers and chief information officers had experienced a shortage of IT staff in the last year.

In 2005 the figure was only 35 per cent, indicating just how rapidly the skills gap has grown.

Other major problems included IT service delivery problems, identified as an issue by 46 per cent of respondents and staff with inadequate IT skills (38 per cent).

Another area for concern was disaster recovery and business continuity difficulties with 25 per cent of those surveyed saying that that lack of a plan for worst case scenarios had caused them a headache in the past year.

This latest survey echoes the findings of a study conducted by the National Computing Centre which concluded that IT skills are in short supply.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service - http://www.totalrecall.co.uk – for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.