Photo Credit: Spiceworks
Have you seen Spiceworks’ 2014 STATE of IT report yet? Not only is it packed full of really great information, it’s a beautiful piece of content (Well done, Spiceworks!). You should definitely check it out, but there’s a lot to consume so let me break down some of what the data is saying here.
Respondent Profile:
IT pros from North America (NA) and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) were surveyed, with a slight skew toward small and medium businesses (SMB). 90% of those surveyed were involved in managing IT budgets.
IT Budget:
Interestingly, 42% of those surveyed plan to increase their budgets in 2015. Spiceworks points out this increase is substantial, however I would flip this around and say that this also means 58% are not planning to increase budgets. For me, that actually seems more substantial (apparently my glass is half empty.) IT professionals are challenged with keeping up to the rapid changes in technology and without additional spending, this means they need to get smarter with what they have. For SMBs, this could involve eliminating disparate small business networks and systems by centralizing data into a single small business NAS solution or consolidating and integrating existing software. It’s doing more with less.
The majority of respondents have adopted some sort of cloud solution, or plan to within the next six months. This is not surprising. What is interesting is that small and medium businesses have adopted cloud solutions at a faster rate than large enterprises. Although the cloud offers a myriad of benefits to companies of all sizes, the switching costs for large enterprises are higher because of existing infrastructure. One reason small businesses turn to the cloud is for that very reason; it requires little to no upfront capital expenditure. Many small businesses are now finding that personal clouds are the ideal solution for their data because they offer the security of a private office network with the convenience of cloud remote access.
However, new enterprise cloud solutions are popping up every day, and it will continue to be easier for larger organizations to transition more of their data to the cloud. And they will.
Mobile and BYOD
No shocker here — mobile and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) is on the rise. 81% of organizations are smartphone-ready or plan to be within the next six months. Along those same lines, 68% support BYOD. What does this mean for IT pros? It means adapting to a mobile network and remote access world. Spiceworks described this perfectly: “How are IT pros handling the influx of devices? More support. More policies. More management. And, of course, more bacon to ease the transition.”
And more…
Like I’ve already said, there is a ton of great info on the report. I haven’t covered all of it here (future blog inspiration, perhaps?). This data confirms a fact we already know: The role of IT continues to become more complex with each passing year, and savvy IT professionals must adapt to rapidly changing technologies to create the most value for their organizations.
Take a look at Seagate’s IT Resource Center here.
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