IT directors are unconvinced and remain reluctant to buy
into emerging technologies, despite increased budgets and better
understanding, an IDC survey has found.
The IDC's annual Systems Survey 2004 also revealed that 2% more
IT professionals have a more positive outlook for the new year than
last year.
However, they remain decidedly unimpressed by some of the newer
technologies on offer - in particular, blade servers, tablet PCs
and applications servers - and were either sceptical or ignorant
about their usefulness.
Chris Ingle, group consultant in IDC's EMEA Systems Group, said
that there was a definite split depending on the size of the
organisation adding, "Large organisations tended to be sceptical;
smaller organisations tended to be ignorant."
The other, and more expected, change was the increasing interest
in Linux. Although there was little evidence that organisations
were kicking out their existing systems to forklift in a Linux
infrastructure, there is a growing willingness for IT directors to
experiment with the open-source operating system.
The survey found 48% of Linux servers purchased in 2003 were
used to deploy an application (the remainder were used for server
consolidation, supporting an existing application and development).
Only 31% of Unix and Windows systems bought were for new
applications.
Ingle pointed out that Linux figures were based on a lower
installed base but, even so, said the results were encouraging for
open source.
"The way I would read it is that Linux is a less mature
platform, so inevitably there will be less purchasing for
supporting existing applications. But customers who are bringing
Linux into their environments have considered alternatives to the
applications they are deploying and decided that Linux is better
for this."
The survey interviewed 1,000 IT professionals responsible for
their companies' infrastructures in six countries in Europe.
The survey found that the UK, Germany and Sweden were most
positive about their investment prospects. France, Spain and Italy
were less positive.
Maxwell Cooter writes for Techworld.com