Cost Management, Virtualization Top Concerns of IT Pros

Ahead of its user conference next week, SHARE (www.share.org) conducted a survey of its members -- enterprise IT professionals at IBM customer sites, including retail, distribution, education, R&D, health care, computer manufacturers and software developers. The organization asked participants to select the top IT issues they face.

Topping the list of 162 participating companies: Cost management (reduction and/or avoidance), which was cited by over half (55 percent) of respondents, followed by virtualization (46 percent), “improving value of IT to the business and/or deriving competitive advantage from IT” (43 percent), enterprise security (36 percent), and the aging/demographics of current IT staff (27 percent).

Of those putting virtualization in the top spot, server virtualization was the top issue, followed by storage virtualization and network virtualization.

Other issues noted include business continuity planning (27 percent), cloud computing (26 percent), and compliance (25 percent). Of the respondents ranking cloud computing as a key issue, the focus was on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), followed by software as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service.

Most respondents came from companies with 1000 to 10,000 employees (32 percent), followed by those with 10,000 to 50,000 employees (27 percent). The greatest number of respondents (35 percent) came from finance, banking, and insurance, following by computer and equipment manufacturers and software developers (these two categories were lumped together) at 20 percent.

SHARE is an independent association run by volunteers that provides education and training and networking opportunities. One theme of the organization’s Boston conference is the benefits cloud computing provides enterprise IT in lowering IT expenses. The conference will also examine “how virtualization is being used to foster rapid innovation and increase agility to respond quickly to the dynamics of today’s enterprise organization,” according to a release, as well as “how IT organizations are dealing with competing budget priorities in challenging economic times.”

--James E. Powell
Editorial Director, ESJ

Posted by Jim Powell on 07/26/2010