{"id":1895,"date":"2012-12-06T02:35:02","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T02:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=380"},"modified":"2012-12-06T02:35:02","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T02:35:02","slug":"the-state-of-smb-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/the-state-of-smb-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of SMB IT"},"content":{"rendered":"

The State of SMB IT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spiceworks<\/a>, a collaboration of IT professionals, has released a semi-annual report on small and medium business technology plans and purchase intent.\u00a0 The infographic is full<\/strong> of fantastic information, including growing trends, where the money is going, and how businesses are prioritizing their services. How do IT professionals feel about BYOD?\u00a0 The Cloud?\u00a0 Let\u2019s find out.<\/p>\n

Budgets Are Growing \u2013 Jobs Aren\u2019t<\/strong><\/p>\n

Budgets for IT departs are growing steadily, on average by about 162,000 dollars.\u00a0 The surprising thing is that most businesses aren\u2019t planning to bring on any more staff, at least not for the next 6 months.\u00a0 The solution to employers seems to be, better technology, less employees.\u00a0 Employers with less than 20 employees spend 1900 dollars per employee on average, and companies with 250 or more spent 700 dollars per employee on average.<\/p>\n

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Where is the Money Headed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hardware is really the answer.\u00a0 The majority of IT budgets fall into hardware purchases, with software a close second, and IT services falling in third.\u00a0 Tablets are the new trend, growing substantially in offices all over.\u00a0 87% of respondents to the Spiceworks survey plan to make purchases of hardware, 38% of that being tablet purchases.\u00a0 This is an increase of the last survey by almost 10%.\u00a0 Sure Desktops, laptops, monitors, and servers come first, but tablets are growing.\u00a0 Desktop upgrades are still the highest priority for businesses, followed in order by servers, laptops, SAN\/NAS servers, and Wireless Networking products.<\/p>\n

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Playing it Safe<\/strong><\/p>\n

75% of respondents plan to upgrade or renew their software purchases during the rest of this year, with most of them focusing on Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam software.\u00a0 Security has been a majority issue throughout this year, and securing the network has become a number one priority of most organizations.\u00a0 With the threat of identity theft and corporate espionage, your network can never be too safe.\u00a0 Not to mention the hassle Viruses cause for IT personnel.\u00a0 They slow down your staff, and increase the workload on your IT staff.\u00a0 Backup and Recovery Software are also high on the new purchase list for SMB\u2019s.\u00a0 As more and more people move away from paper files and start working digitally, better backups are required to keep their files safe and intact.\u00a0 Virtualization software and Productivity Suites are also high on the new purchase lists.<\/p>\n

Web Hosting is another top service among business.\u00a0 Budgets for IT services have grown by about 7% since 2010, and that money has been placed into hosted backups, data storage, Domains, ISPs, and email hosting.<\/p>\n

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There are Clouds, but it Doesn\u2019t Look Like Rain<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the last 6 months, Cloud usage went from 48% usage to 62% usage.\u00a0 Even more impressive?\u00a0 Its expected to grow to 73%, an additional 11%, over the next 6 months.\u00a0 As we know, the Cloud has been growing massively all over the world over the past year, with Cloud apps and services popping up exponentially.<\/p>\n

Mid-sized businesses are taking lead on cloud adoption.\u00a0 The top cloud services being adopted are Web hosting, email hosting, data backup, application hosting, and content filtering.\u00a0 Data storage is planned to be added to that group within the next sixth months by most users.<\/p>\n

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Virtualize This!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Virtualization is growing strong among SMB\u2019s across the board.\u00a0 As hardware becomes better and server become easier to virtualize, less physical servers are needed to run your business.\u00a0 Adoption of virtualization only grew by 1% over the last 6 months, but is expected to grow by 14% in the next 6 months.\u00a0 Larger companies are quicker to adopt it than smaller organizations, with over 75% of companies with 250 or more employees virtualizing multiple servers.\u00a0 On average, SMB\u2019s have about 3.3 applications virtualized.\u00a0 Once they start, it is likely they will start growing virtually.<\/p>\n

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Desktops aren\u2019t safe from the virtual hammer either.\u00a0 Thin clients and virtual desktops solutions are on the rise.\u00a0 Nearly 25% of respondents have already started using them, and 16% more are planning to adopted desktop virtualization in the next 6 months.\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t matter how many employees are in the company, desktop virtualization seems to be growing.\u00a0 Small and large companies both have 26% of their desktops virtualized on average.<\/p>\n

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Mobile is Moving<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tablets and Smartphones are growing like mad in the workplace.\u00a0 Tablet and Smartphone adoption is expected to grow by 12% in the next 6 months as people work on the go.\u00a0 As smarter workers, we don\u2019t stay at a desk anymore.\u00a0 What I should say is \u201cWe don\u2019t have<\/em> to.\u201d\u00a0 We are able to keep moving while working thanks to cloud applications, mobile technology, and great headsets.\u00a0 That is starting to reflect in IT purchasing policies with the growth in purchasing of mobile hardware.<\/p>\n

This brings up a topic of concern. BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device<\/em>, is a controversial issue that has been discussed by many.\u00a0 Some love it, and some fear it.\u00a0 The proponents of BYOD say it\u2019s a great way to keep staff connected and working, improves morale, and doesn\u2019t require that you purchase any new hardware.\u00a0 Not to mention that many employees feel that they deserve<\/em> to bring their devices to work, and would whether they were \u201callowed\u201d to or not.\u00a0 Nay-Sayers of BYOD feel that allowing users to bring their own devices and connect them to the work network is a security risk, and causes additional work and stress on the IT teams.\u00a0 From much of my research it feels that the more accepted view is that BYOD is going to happen whether you want it to or not, and the best thing IT can do is accept it and control it, by preparing their network for those devices to be connected.\u00a0 Once you accept it, you can manage it, prevent security risks, and keep your users happy and connected.<\/p>\n

However not everyone agrees with me, in fact, this is a split issue. Only 59% of organizations accepted BYOD, 81% of them accepting smartphones, 62% accepting tablets, and only 44% accepting computers.\u00a0 Attitudes about BYOD vary, with only 14% of users feeling BYOD is the future of technology and fully embracing it, 32% feeling it works for some but not all, 24% feeling it\u2019s just a big headache, and 30% not knowing how to feel about it.\u00a0 It is a toss up to see how it will sway in the future, but BYOD is sure to be a big topic of discussion in the next 6 months.<\/p>\n

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Apple or Android<\/strong><\/p>\n

Apple reigns supreme for tablets with the iPad still being the preferred choice by employees.\u00a0 Although android isn\u2019t far behind, trailed by Windows 7, Blackberry, Windows CP, and Google Chrome.\u00a0 When it comes to Smartphones, Android and Apple phones are just about even in demand.\u00a0 Blackberry falls into 3rd<\/sup>, and Windows into a far 4th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The State of SMB IT Spiceworks, a collaboration of IT […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[508],"tags":[442,721,426,392,564,428,844,845],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}