Forty percent of companies that store information in a virtualized environment have suffered data loss in the last 12 months, a new study published by Kroll Ontrack concludes. The data protection specialist surveyed more than 700 enterprises to determine whether virtualization is as reliable as VMware would have you believe.

Kroll found that 84 percent of enterprises utilize virtual storage, and one in three have already virtualized at least 75 percent their IT infrastructure. Fifty two percent of the respondents said that virtualization decreases the risk data loss, while 28 percent said that that the technology has no impact on data protection.

The percentage of enterprises that suffered data loss in the past year is down 25 percent from 2011, the report highlights, but companies are having a harder time recovering their information. Only 33 percent of organizations were able to make a full recovery after their most recent data loss event, noticeably less than the 54 percent Kroll recorded two years ago.

“While the use of VMware as a common infrastructure has matured and less incidents seem to occur, companies still suffer from critical data loss,” said Todd Johnson, the vice president of data recovery operations at Kroll Ontrack. “The decreased ability to fully restore data proves that not engaging an experienced data recovery service after a virtual environment data loss creates a high risk of permanent data loss.”

Backup and recovery took the center stage at this week’s Oracle OpenWorld 2013 conference in San Francisco. Caitlin Gordon, a senior product marketing manager for EMC’s backup group, dropped by theCube to explain why the rise of analytics – compounded by the mobile explosion – has turned data protection into a top priority for Oracle customers.