The increasing cost of data storage in the IT services industry means that dedupulication could become the technology of choice, according to Gartner.

A report on itpro.co.uk claims that annual growth spending for businesses on data storage is 7.7 per cent for hardware and 7.2 per cent for software. This compares to an annual growth of 2.5 per cent for an overall IT budget.

Analyst Dave Russell said: "Storage is consuming a disproportionate amount of budget."

He added that dedupulication, which is optimised data compression, can offer big benefits in cost reduction and is being deployed rapidly across the IT services industry.

Consistent data back-up and tiered storage were also cited as a means of reducing costs and improving performance, as well as archiving properly on less expensive media.

The news comes as Californian surf brand O'Neill announced it is looking to roll out dedupulication storage systems as part of a new disaster recovery plan.