Industry observers were not surprised that business continuity and disaster recovery planning were among Asia's top 10 IT key concerns, as identified in ZDNet Asia's IT Priorities 2007/2008 study.

John Brand, director of Hydrasight, said: "This is why we're seeing less interest in 'innovation' based technologies and more interest in 'foundation' based technologies, despite some media hype and interest to the contrary. The rising cost and complexity of delivering IT today has made backup and recovery much more difficult issues to deal with."

Many organizations, Brand said, are battling issues around outsourcing, hosted services, managed service providers, software as a service, offshore maintenance and distributed development. "Just keeping the IT environment up and running these days is a burden that no one likes talking about, let alone paying for," he noted.

"But the reality is, many IT environments, whether delivered internally or outsourced, are fragile complex beasts that demand constant care and attention," Brand said. "Like elephants snow-skiing, all they should be worried about is staying up."

Simon Lawrie, Asia-Pacific vice president of global networks and solutions, Orange Business Services, agreed that the challenge of keeping computer systems and networks up and running remains an ongoing priority.

Lawrie said: "Looking at the next 12 months, two challenges spring to mind: The first is the need for Asian enterprises to provide network redundancy and a growing preoccupation with forging single IT departments from disparate, acquired and merged business entities and incumbent suppliers.

"Enterprises in the region will be challenged to seek diversity in suppliers' networks in order to guarantee business continuity in the event of natural disasters such as earthquakes, and to continue the integration of voice and messaging services, enhancing employee collaboration as more staff work from home or travel," he added.