Businesses are potentially wasting significant resources in storing unnecessary data.

Gartner warned that businesses are spending 20 percent more than necessary on backing up unnecessary data, with more than $10 billion being wasted worldwide.

The research pointed to a failure by many businesses, to effectively update their backup policies, resulting in worthless data being retained.

Dave Russell, research vice-president of Gartner, said: “Often, the problem is that companies mistake backup technology for data archiving,” adding, “Backup is largely for operational recovery, not for long-term retention.”