Disaster recovery is fastest-growing sector of IT industry
Follow the money: IT security sector is growing, but within it, disaster recovery subsector is growing the fastest
“Be Prepared!” may be the Boy Scouts motto, but it is also becoming, in fits and starts, a guiding principle for more and more corporate leaders: Hurricane Katrina convinced many of them that they must be ready to implement a systems recovery plan when disaster strikes. How do we know that corporate leadership is now taking this recognition to heart? Because the latest U.S. government payroll statistics say they do. Payrolls among firms that offer disaster recovery and software installation services are the fastest growing in the IT industry, an analysis of the latest government statistics show. From November 2004 through November 2005, growth among IT service firms which include those offerings rose 6.8 percent. This growth suggests that an increasing number of business executives have internalized the realization that computer failures could be catastrophic to their businesses. Overall payroll expansion among all IT services firms during that same period averaged 2.8 percent.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics categorizes IT service firms as Computer Systems Design and Related Services. Within that category are four subgroups which include programming, design, facilities management, and other-related services. Disaster recovery, along with software installation, falls into the “other” category. Specific numbers are not available for each subgroup, but overall IT service payroll in 2005 rose 2.7 percent to 1,206,200.
-read more in this report