Backup to be a top tech trend in 2006—we can only hope

The Small Business Trends blog is running a series of articles on trends for 2006. Guest blogger Ramon Ray contributed his top technology trends just a few days ago. And what should appear on the list but backup, alongside security, CRM, and voice over IP? That's right: data backup.

"I could write miles of stories about businesses who wished they would have backed up their data only to find it lost due to human or technology error. More and more businesses are going to ENSURE that their critical business information is backed up and can be recovered on demand."

I'm certainly doing my part to see that they do, but data loss horrors have been going on for years, and many individuals and small businesses still don't make regular backups, or check the backups they make, or have off-site backups.

Still, Ray isn't the only one to predict a boom in backups and storage, and Hurricane Katrina has certainly gotten a lot of people thinking about protecting their data from natural disasters. Maybe 2006 really will be the year of better backups.