Although there may be several areas of business that can safely be scaled down and reorganised during tough times, organisations are warned that slashing the business continuity budget is not only irresponsible and dangerous, but can result in serious damage to the business in the long term.

Figures from a recent survey conducted by Continuity Central, a US-based business continuity portal, show that only 40 percent of companies polled globally expect the recession to have no impact, or a positive impact, on their business continuity initiatives. Conversely, in South Africa, according to a recent study by BMI-T, the demand for business continuity services is expected to increase continuously in line with the IT security market trends. In fact, the total Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) spend on business continuity hardware, software and services up to 2011 is expected to be in the region of 18 percent, with software revenue growing the most. The study furthermore identified the following as the four most prominent trends in business continuity: