Businesses may be struggling with the choice between disaster recovery offerings in the current market, it has been stated.

SearchDisasterRecovery explained that while many people will be tempted to invest in in-house hosted disaster recovery, people ought to really consider outsourced online data backup instead, as "experience shows us" that this is much more successful.

This is largely due to an outsourcer's specialised ability in the field of disaster recovery, resulting in a quicker return to full capacity should there be a long period of downtime.

The website still asserted, however, that even in the current economic climate, people should never simply walk away from an online data backup plan.

It continued: "Instead, go with a lower, less-expensive tier that gives reasonable protection for the available budget. Not having a disaster recovery plan should never be an option."

This week, Symantec revealed that many people are unwilling to invest in disaster recovery as it potentially creates extended periods of downtime which may impact on profitability.

New research from Connect found that, on average, it takes businesses that use backup tapes take 11.6 hours to retrieve and restore files. Connect is now recommending that SMEs switch to online backup.