ITIC Reports & Surveys

Cost Formulas Essential to Qualify and Quantify Uptime

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

ITIC survey finds that corporate application availability requirements are increasing; 50% of businesses lack funds for new reliability technology.

BOSTON, MA (April 6, 2009) — Eight out of 10 businesses — 81% — report that their major business applications require higher availability rates than they did two or three years ago. However, nearly three-quarters of companies — 73% — are unable to quantify the cost of downtime or the impact that unplanned outages have on the business. Those are the results of a new survey from Information Technology Intelligence Corporation (ITIC), a high-tech research and consulting firm.

The survey polled 300 C-level executives and IT managers at 300 corporations worldwide. However, the survey findings also indicated that approximately half of all businesses — 49% — lack the budget for high availability technology. Additionally, 40% of the respondents said they don’t understand what qualifies as high availability. Eight out of 10 IT managers can’t quantify the cost of downtime to their C-level executives.

“The demand for application availability has grown, particularly with the emergence of Virtualization 2.0. However, network uptime isn’t keeping pace. Only two out of 10 companies understand that four nines — 99.99% availability and above — is what they need today. The inability of users to put valid metrics and cost formulas in place to track and quantify what uptime means to their organization is woefully inadequate,” said Laura DiDio, Principal at ITIC.

Survey Results Summary:

  • 54% of IT managers and executives surveyed said more than two-thirds of their companies’ applications require the highest level of availability. Yet, 41% said would be satisfied with conventional 99 to 99.9% availability for their most critical applications, which does not qualify as a high-availability or continuous-availability solution.
  • 81% said the number of applications that demand high availability has increased in the past two-to-three years.
  • Of those who said they have been unable to meet service level agreements (SLAs), 72% can’t or don’t keep track of the cost and productivity losses created by downtime.

End User Comments:

  • “We are continually being asked to do more with less. We are now at a point, where the number of complex systems requiring expert knowledge has exceeded the headcount needed to maintain them … I am dreading vacation season.”
  • “We are an Application Service Provider. While our SLA guarantees are fairly modest – 98% uptime – We have found that we have to compensate our larger clients for any significant downtime. We had a half day outage a couple of years ago which cost us in excess of $40,000 in goodwill payouts to a handful of our clients, despite the fact that it was the first outage in 5 years.”
  • “If people knew the actual dollar value their customers represent, they’d already have the necessary software availability solutions in place to safeguard applications.”
  • “Most of the time, our biggest concerns center around keeping what we have running and available. Change usually costs money, and at the moment our budgets are simply in survival mode.”

Survey Methodology and Background

The ITIC survey was commissioned by Stratus Technologies in Maynard, MA. ITIC conducted a blind, non product-specific survey of 300 IT professionals and queried them on their application availability requirements, virtualization and service level agreement compliance. None of the respondents received any remuneration. The Web-based survey consisted of multiple choice and essay questions. ITIC analysts also conducted two dozen first person customer interviews to obtain detailed anecdotal data.

Respondents ranged from SMBs with 100 users to very large enterprises with over 100,000 end users. Industries represented: academic, advertising, aerospace, banking, communications, consumer products, defense, energy, finance, government, healthcare, insurance, IT services, legal, manufacturing, media and entertainment, telecommunications, transportation, and utilities. None of the survey respondents received any remuneration for their participation.

About Information Technology Intelligence Corporation (ITIC)

ITIC, founded in 2002, is a research and consulting firm in suburban Boston. It provides primary research on a wide variety of technology topics for vendors and enterprises. ITIC’s mission is to help its clients make sense of the technology and business events and provide tactical, practical and actionable advice. For more information visit ITIC’s website at https://itic-corp.com.

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Apple Gets More Entrenched in the Enterprise

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

Apple Macintosh Enterprise Usage Continues to Grow

Apple Mac and OS X 10.x continue to make inroads in the enterprise.

ITIC’s 2009 Global IT and Technology Trends Survey shows that corporate enterprises continue to embrace the Apple Mac and OS X 10.x server operating system in numbers not seen since the late 1980s. ITIC polled IT managers and C-level executives at 700 corporations worldwide. Among the survey highlights:

  • Over two-thirds of the 700 survey respondents – 68% — indicated they are likely to allow their end users to deploy Macs as their corporate enterprise desktops in the next 12 months.
  • Almost one-quarter or 23% have a significant number of Macintoshes (> 50) present in their organizations. Apple Macs have long been a favorite of company executives, but the survey responses clearly indicate that Mac usage has filtered down to rank and file knowledge workers across the enterprise.
  • Half of all the survey respondents – 50% — said they plan to increase integration with existing Apple consumer products such as the iPhone to allow users to access corporate Email and other applications. This augurs well for the iPhone to establish itself as a viable alternative to Research In Motion’s (RIM) as a mobile device that allows users to access Email and other collaboration applications.

In summary, the ITIC/Sunbelt survey responses show that businesses will find themselves challenged to do more with fewer resources. The respondents also exhibited their practicality and resourcefulness in extending the lifespan of still-useful technologies like Windows XP. However those who have the need and the budget, will get an able assist from emerging technologies like virtualization – and for those that correctly configure and deploy them – Vista and the Mac and OS X 10.x

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ITIC Survey Indicates 35% of Companies Will Delay Network Upgrades for Lack of Money

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

Server hardware, network infrastructure and storage upgrades are hardest hit; 97% of security upgrades are on course; nearly 40% of companies report their migrations will proceed on schedule.

BOSTON, MA (February 2, 2009) — Information Technology Intelligence Corporation (ITIC), a high-tech research and consulting firm, today announced that the global economic downturn will force 35% of corporations to delay or abandon crucial network upgrades during 2009.

The latest joint survey conducted by ITIC and Sunbelt Software polled over 700 C-level executives and IT managers at 700 corporations worldwide. The results showed that budgetary constraints and IT staffing issues topped users’ list of most daunting business challenges in the year ahead. The corporate respondents indicated they are understandably cautious about spending their precious capital expenditure monies and are only committing to crucial upgrades on an “as needed” basis.

Among the key survey findings:

  • Over one-third of the corporate respondents — 35% — said that the ongoing economic downturn had caused their companies to delay or abandon planned software, hardware and network infrastructure upgrades. However, an additional 26% of those polled — over one-quarter of companies — indicated they may yet be forced to shelve crucial migration plans due to lack of funds and a dearth of trained IT staff.
  • Of the 35% of companies that indicated they will delay or abandon certain planned upgrades — the network projects that will be most impacted are: server hardware (21%) and network infrastructure products such as routers (19%) and storage devices (15%).
  • Security remains the sole market segment that appears to be immune to the global economic downturn. An overwhelming 97% majority of the survey respondents said their security upgrades will proceed as planned, with only a very small 3% minority indicating they will defer security upgrades.
  • Overall, 39% of the survey respondents — nearly two out of five businesses — reported that their network migration and upgrade plans will proceed as planned in calendar 2009.
  • Some 27% of companies — or about three out of 10 businesses — reported their 2009 IT budgets will decrease; another 32% said their budgets will remain the same as 2008. Only 16% of the survey respondents reported their IT budgets will increase during the next 12 months.
  • Of the 16% of corporations that said budgets will increase — the largest portion — 23% said the budget increases would be modest — ranging from 5% to 15%. 8% reported their IT budgets would rise minimally — 1% to 5%. Large budget increases will be a rarity in 2009: only 1% of companies will see budgets go up by 20% to 30%, and 3% will see IT budgets increase by more than 30%.

Survey Methodology and Background

The Web-based survey included multiple choice and essay responses. In addition, ITIC and Sunbelt conducted two dozen first person customer interviews to validate the survey responses. ITIC and Sunbelt received no vendor sponsorship for this research and none of the survey respondents received any remuneration for their participation. Approximately 85% of the respondents came from North America; the remaining 15% came from 20 countries including Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South America.

About Information Technology Intelligence Corporation (ITIC)

ITIC, founded in 2002, is a research and consulting firm in suburban Boston. It provides primary research on a wide variety of technology topics for vendors and enterprises. ITIC’s mission is to help its clients make sense of the technology and business events and provide tactical, practical and actionable advice. For more information visit ITIC’s website at https://itic-corp.com.

About Sunbelt Software

Sunbelt Software was founded in 1994 and is a leading provider of Windows security and management software with product solutions in the areas of antispam and antivirus, antispyware, and vulnerability assessment. Leading products include the CounterSpy and VIPRE product lines. For more information, visit the company’s website at http://sunbeltsoftware.com.

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ITIC 2009 Global IT and Deployment Trends Survey

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

Dear Santa: All I want for Christmas is a Virtual Data Center and a Big (Apple) Mac on my office desktop

The latest independent joint ITIC/Sunbelt Software survey found that demand and deployment for several technology sectors – most notably server and application virtualization – will remain robust in direct contrast to the bearish global economic climate.

ITIC and Sunbelt, polled C-level executives and network administrators at over 700 corporations worldwide on a variety of technology and business related topics. The Web-based survey included multiple choice and essay responses. In addition, ITIC and Sunbelt conducted two dozen first person customer interviews to validate the survey responses. ITIC and Sunbelt received no vendor sponsorship for this research. Additionally, no vendors had any influence or input into the survey or the results and none of the survey respondents received any remuneration for their participation. Approximately 85% of the respondents came from North America; the remaining 15% came from 20 countries including Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South America.

Virtualization Results

Virtually Yours: Server Virtualization Still a Top Priority in the Datacenter

Virtualization remains a high growth technology area, and the survey found that the market leaders – VMware, Microsoft and Citrix are all consolidating their positions. The survey also showed that while desktop and application virtualization will play a pivotal role for businesses – particularly enterprises with > 500 end users, the market will not materialize as quickly as it did for server virtualization. Among the survey highlights:

  • VMware remains the market leader but Microsoft’s Hyper-V is closing the gap. In response to a question in which we asked customers to select ALL the virtualization products they plan to use/deploy in 2009, nearly 60% said they plan to deploy VMware’s ESX Server (29%) or the free VMware Server (30%) . However, 52% of the respondents indicated they will use Microsoft’s Hyper-V or the older Microsoft Virtual Server; 37% of respondents indicated they will opt for Hyper-V compared with the remaining 15% who said they will use the older Virtual Server. This percentage is double the number of survey respondents who indicated they would use Microsoft hypervisor solutions when we polled users in a 2007 survey.
  • When it comes to Application Virtualization solutions, Microsoft’s App-V is the market leader, clearly beating VMware’s ThinApp by a 2-to-1 margin, which also came trailed Citrix’s XenApp 5.0. That said, it must be noted that thus far, only about 15% of the survey respondents have fully virtualized their applications across the entire enterprise.
  • It’s still very early in the game for the emerging application virtualization market: nearly two-thirds — 62% — of businesses have not yet even begun to deploy application virtualization in production environments (though pilot networks abound) or even chosen an application virtualization vendor.
  • Interestingly, in spite of cost constraints and pressures on IT budgets, only 7% of the survey respondents said they had attempted to renegotiate the terms and conditions of their virtualization licensing contracts to get better deals. Another 27% said they were studying the issue but had not yet made any definitive attempts to renegotiate and 66% said “No.”

Microsoft Vista: Most Users “Surprisingly” Satisfied

On the Windows desktop OS front, the ITIC/Sunbelt survey respondents gave Microsoft’s much maligned Vista operating system surprisingly high satisfaction ratings. We say “surprising” because Vista has gotten a lot of bad ink, much of it undeserved. Overall, 59% of the survey respondents said Vista was “Excellent”, “very good” or “good.” Despite these grades though, 45% of those polled said they would skip Vista and go directly to Windows 7 when that desktop OS ships in early 2010. Drilling further into the Vista responses:

  • To date, only 10% of the 700 survey respondents’ organizations have deployed Vista.
  • Windows XP is the primary desktop OS for 88% of the respondents.
  • Vista seems a victim of Windows XP’s success: Among the 45% of survey respondents who indicated they’ll skip Vista, the main reason(s) cited were cost constraints and the prevailing feeling that Windows XP is more than adequately meeting corporations’ business and technology needs.
  • The Vista experience was much better than anticipated for the 10% of companies that use Vista is their primary desktop OS: 27% rated Vista’s performance, reliability and security Excellent or Very Good; another 32% rated it “Good”, 19% said it was “Satisfactory.” Only 19% gave it an “Unsatisfactory” rating, mainly due to application incompatibility problems.

One recurring theme among the survey respondents was that since Windows XP is getting the job done, there’s no compelling business reason to upgrade to Vista.

“Windows XP, Windows 2003 and our other applications are more than adequate for now,” said one network administrator. “That means we will be investing very little in new infrastructure for the next couple of years. The constant upgrade progression for the sake of “keeping current” is dead for now,” he added.

The Vista desktop OS – all six flavors – is generally solid. The biggest impediment facing large enterprises deploying Vista is application incompatibility. This problem is especially acute in large enterprises that have dozens of third party applications associated with specific vertical markets. Consider the case of one such enterprise based in the Northeast with over 3,000 end users.

The company’s IT manager said his firm was 65% deployed onto Vista Business but, he noted, two of his crucial application vendors “have not yet migrated their products.” One is a financial application and the other is a GIS application. “They [the ISVs] have promised compliance by the end of 2009 so we plan to be 100% deployed on Vista by Q1 2010. At that time we’ll be ready to continue our normal replacement cycle (30% per year) deploying Windows 7 Service Pack 1 in late 2010!”

Apple Macintosh Enterprise Usage Continues to Grow

And finally, Apple Mac and OS X 10.x continue to make inroads in the enterprise.

  • Over two-thirds of the 700 survey respondents – 68% — indicated they are likely to allow their end users to deploy Macs as their corporate enterprise desktops in the next 12 months.
  • Almost one-quarter or 23% have a significant number of Macintoshes (> 50) present in their organizations. Apple Macs have long been a favorite of company executives, but the survey responses clearly indicate that Mac usage has filtered down to rank and file knowledge workers across the enterprise.
  • Half of all the survey respondents – 50% — said they plan to increase integration with existing Apple consumer products such as the iPhone to allow users to access corporate Email and other applications. This augurs well for the iPhone to establish itself as a viable alternative to Research In Motion’s (RIM) as a mobile device that allows users to access Email and other collaboration applications.

In summary, the ITIC/Sunbelt survey responses show that businesses will find themselves challenged to do more with fewer resources. The respondents also exhibited their practicality and resourcefulness in extending the lifespan of still-useful technologies like Windows XP. However those who have the need and the budget, will get an able assist from emerging technologies like virtualization – and for those that correctly configure and deploy them – Vista and the Mac and OS X 10.x

ITIC 2009 Global IT and Deployment Trends Survey Read More »

New 2009 Global IT and Technology Trends Forecast

ITIC Reports & Surveys / By

Mac Enterprise Usage Will Increase in 2009; Over two-thirds of businesses are open to letting end users deploy Macs as their corporate desktops; 50% of corporations will expand the integration between Macs and iPhones

BOSTON, MA (December 9, 2008) — The latest independent joint ITIC/Sunbelt Software survey found that Apple Mac hardware and Mac OS X 10.x continues to shine and steadily increase its presence among corporate enterprises.

The latest data, derived from an ITIC/Sunbelt Software Web-based survey that polled over 700 C-level executives and IT managers worldwide indicates that four-out-of five businesses have Macs present in their environment.

Apple Macintosh Enterprise Usage Continues to Grow

  • Over two-thirds of the 700 survey respondents – 68% – indicated they will allow their end users to deploy Macs as their corporate enterprise desktops in the next 12 months. This is double the 34% of companies that responded to this same question in the 2008 ITIC/Sunbelt Global IT and Technology Trends Survey.
  • Half of all the survey respondents – 50% – said they plan to increase integration with existing Apple consumer products such as the iPhone to allow users to access corporate Email and other applications. This indicates that customers perceive the combination of the Mac and the iPhone to be a viable alternative to the rival Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry as a mobile device running key corporate applications.
  • Seven out of 10 businesses – 70% – rated the security of the Apple Mac and OS X as Excellent or Very Good.
  • An 82% majority of corporations rated the reliability of the Mac hardware and OS X 10.x as Excellent or Very Good.
  • Approximately 30% of the survey respondents are using Macs as the hardware platform to virtualize Microsoft’s Windows XP or the Vista operating system on Macintosh hardware in a virtual environment.

“Corporations are deploying Macs and the Mac OS X 10.x at a rate not seen since the late 1980s,” said Laura DiDio, principal at ITIC who conducted the survey. “If Mac hardware and OS X 10.x deployments continue at this rate – and we believe they will – Apple could realistically double its market share from its current rate of about 5% to 10% or more by 2011,” she added.

Survey Methodology and Background

The Web-based survey included multiple choice and essay responses. In addition, ITIC and Sunbelt conducted two dozen first person customer interviews to validate the survey responses. ITIC and Sunbelt received no vendor sponsorship for this research and none of the survey respondents received any remuneration for their participation. Approximately 85% of the respondents came from North America; the remaining 15% came from 20 countries including Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South America.

About Information Technology Intelligence Corporation (ITIC)

ITIC, founded in 2002, is a research and consulting firm in suburban Boston. It provides primary research on a wide variety of technology topics for vendors and enterprises. ITIC’s mission is to help its clients make sense of the technology and business events and provide tactical, practical and actionable advice. For more information visit ITIC’s website at https://itic-corp.com.

 

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