Servers and PC Dominate IT Spending; One-Third Spent on HW and Maintenance
Nearly
one-third of the IT budget is spent on enterprise hardware and
maintenance, including servers, PC storage, and networking, according
to Forrester Research. Servers and PCs continue to dominate IT spending,
accounting for more than half the IT hardware budget. Within the
enterprise hardware category, spending distribution is:
- PCs account for more than 25%
- Servers account for more than 25%
- Storage accounts for 18%,
- Network hardware accounts for 15%
- Systems management at 14%.
In contrast to the overall IT budget — where 79% of the investment goes to ongoing operations and maintenance — firms are spending nearly 31% of their hardware budgets on new investments.
Disaster recovery, security, and consolidation of IT infrastructure remain the top three priorities for the next 12 months. These are the projects driving the hardware spend described above.
- 56% of firms point to purchasing or upgrading their disaster recovery capabilities and significantly upgrading their security environment.
- 52% of the firms surveyed rank the goal of reducing the number and variety of server configurations as either very important or important.
- 43% feel the same way about reducing the number of OS varieties and configurations.
Server
Virtualization vs. Grid
Computing:
To reduce the number and variety of server hardware and OS
configurations, 23% of firms are using server virtualization and more than
25% are either piloting it (12%) or interested in it (16%) — far
exceeding the interest and use of computer grids.
However, nearly 25% of the firms, however, are not yet aware of server virtualization and 38% of firms are not aware of computing grid technology.
These are the key highlights from Forrester's report: “The State Of Enterprise Infrastructure In Europe 2006”. Methodology: In May 2006, Forrester surveyed 302 IT decision-makers at European firms. Fifty percent of the respondents came from enterprises with 1,000 to 4,999 employees (large firms), 28% came from enterprises with 5,000 to 19,999 employees (very large firms), and the remaining 22% were from enterprises with 20,000 or more employees (global firms).
