Few Plan Network/Server Budget Increases

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A smaller portion of IT professionals will experience an increase to their network budgets in 2005 (20.6 percent) than those who are currently outsourcing (20.9 percent) or planning to outsource network operations (13.1 percent), according to an ITtoolbox survey that identified server trends.

The largest portion of respondents (22.2 percent) allocated between $5,001 and $15,000 for the networking purchasing and maintenance budget in 2004, with nearly an equal percentage spending less than $5,000 (15.2 percent) and $50,001 to $100,000 (15.6 percent).

Nearly 21 percent of the group of global respondents indicated a planned increase to the network budget in 2005, however, roughly 26 percent had no budget increase planned; 25 percent were unsure; and 28 percent were undergoing budget review.

Of those who expected to augment their network budgets in 2005, nearly 29 percent said they are currently outsourcing network operations and another 22 percent are planning to do so in the coming six months. Less than 10 percent of respondents who expected budget decreases in 2005 had current outsourcing plans and just over 10 percent had future outsourcing plans.

The types of servers that were most used in the organizations were database (78.5 percent); mail (73.3 percent); network (69.2 percent); application (66.8 percent); Web (65.6 percent); proxy (53 percent); and storage (50.6 percent).

Medium-sized companies had a higher percentage of application servers (82.5 percent); large companies and Asian companies used mail servers above any other functions; European and North American companies primarily used database servers.

”With six different server technologies utilized by at least half of the survey’s participants, the data from the 2004 ITtoolbox Networking/Server Trend Survey points to the opportunities that exist in today’s marketplace,” said George Krautzel, co-founder and president of ITtoolbox. He continued, ”With consolidation options such as clustering and centralization available, CIO’s need to stay informed in order to meet business requirements, cut cost, and maximize the utilization of existing resources.”

The Hewlett Packard-sponsored survey of 247 global respondents was mostly composed of network/systems administrators (19.5 percent) from U.S. (37.3 percent) companies with over 1,000 employees (27.9 percent). India, the UK, Africa, South America, and Australia were also represented.

This article was first published on clickz.com.