A third of large UK companies are delaying infrastructure
upgrades and software refreshes and turning to virtualisation,
software as a service and cloud computing as the recession bites
into IT budgets, says the National
Computing Centre (NCC).
Its latest
survey of
IT infrastructure plans shows that 23% of the large and
multinational businesses polled are postponing hardware upgrades,
and an equal number are holding off refreshing their software. In
total, 30% of companies are delaying upgrades to their IT
infrastructure.
Researchers said companies had more options for infrastructure
solutions than ever. This made it hard to pick its optimum
solution.
"The delivery of applications from a hosted environment -
usually called
software as a service (SaaS) - is growing in popularity," said
Steve Fox, managing director of the NCC's Evaluation Centre. He
said 30% of companies see SaaS as either a very important (16%) or
important (14%) technology. A further 30% see it as of medium
importance, with only 11% viewing it as of little importance and 7%
as of no importance.
The provision of infrastructure services over the internet,
known as
"
cloud computing", is still relatively new, Fox said. Even so,
11% of companies see it as very important and 11% as important to
their future infrastructure, with a further 18% viewing it as of
medium importance. But 39% of companies have yet to make up their
minds about it.
"This confirms a trend that IT budgets are coming under severe
pressure. Any projects that are non-essential or affect only the
back office are coming under increased scrutiny," he said. "This
will force companies to look more seriously at alternative delivery
infrastructure such as SaaS and cloud computing."
Virtualisation is playing a bigger role in the IT environment as
it can reduce both the cost of the infrastructure and its carbon
footprint, Fox said. The survey shows that 42% of organisations
have implemented server virtualisation, 28% are planning to, and 2%
are evaluating it.
"Desktop virtualisation is the next area to gain momentum," Fox
said. This is more complex because it has a direct impact on
end-users, he said.
Thus far, 7% of companies have implemented desktop
virtualisation across the whole organisation, 14% use it in some
parts of the organisation, and 14% are planning to use it. A
further 14% are evaluating the technology. Only 33% have no
virtualisation plans.
"Virtualisation has almost been seen as a universal panacea for
both cost saving and providing a 'greener' IT environment," said
Cliff Mills, NCC's research manager. "However, the easy first phase
of virtualisation has been done and the next steps will require
even more careful planning and analysis to achieve real
benefits."
NCC interviewed more than 100 companies. Twenty four per cent of
respondents were from the public sector, followed by IT &
telecoms (15%), banking & finance (12%), professional services
(12%) manufacturing (10%), construction (8%) and healthcare
(6%).
Thirteen per cent had turnovers of more than £5bn, 6% were in
the £1bn to £5bn range, and 13% in the £500m to £1bn range. Twenty
seven per cent had turnovers between £100 million and £500m, and
15% £50m to £100m. At the smaller end, 10% had a turnover between
£10m and £50m and 17% £5m to £10m.