By Paul Kunert
18 December 2008
A survey by the National Computing Centre (NCC) has confirmed what the channel has experienced for months – firms are postponing infrastructure upgrades and software refreshes in response to the tough economic climate.
Nearly one quarter of 100 companies polled by the NCC said they are delaying hardware upgrades and freezing software refreshes and 30% said they were holding off on infrastructure upgrades.
“This confirms a trend we have seen in previous research that IT budgets are coming under severe pressure and any project that are viewed as non-essential or only effecting the back office are coming under increased scrutiny,” said Steve Fox, managing director of NCC’s Evaluation Centre.
The upshot is that more and more companies will look to SaaS or Cloud Computing as alternative delivery mechanisms that reduce traditional upfront capital expenditures, he added.
Around 30% saw SaaS as either an important or very important alternative though the response to the relatively newer concept of Cloud Computing was a little more conservative.
Virtualisation continues to be an important technology that helps customers reduce complexity and costs NCC said. The survey showed 42% had deployed server virtualisation while the desktop equivalent was beginning to gain momentum.
The research by NCC is backed up by data from IDC, which stated that UK server sales had dropped in the third quarter as customers held off spending on non-core activities that did not yield a clear return-on-investment.
