LONDON – September 28, 2016 – Spiceworks, the professional network for IT, today announced the results of its 2017 State of IT report, a study examining the technology budget and adoption trends of IT professionals in North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). According to the results, IT budgets in 2017 are expected to remain relatively flat across North America and EMEA, but in the United Kingdom specifically, budgets are expected to decrease by five percent as IT professionals grapple with political and economic uncertainty driven by “Brexit”. Additionally, 60 percent of EMEA respondents anticipate IT headcount remaining flat in 2017 despite an expectation that company revenues will increase.
The results show:
- Thirty-three percent of IT professionals in EMEA say global political and economic uncertainty directly affects their organisation’s willingness to purchase IT products and services.
- Fifty-one percent of EMEA respondents also agree that economic and political uncertainty causes their organisation to reconsider what countries they store corporate data in.
- Thirty-five percent say it causes their organisation to reconsider what countries they purchase technology products and services from.
“In addition to more conservative IT investments, the expected fallout from political and economic instability caused by issues such as Brexit has led to many questions marks around the future of data governanace in the UK and the country’s ability to employ skilled workers and influence the global IT market,” said John Webb, general manager of Europe at Spiceworks. “IT pros in EMEA, particularly in the UK, will have to do more with less in the coming year as belts are tightened due to fluctuating exchange rates, regulation changes, and other unforeseen challenges.”
Cloud and hosted services become bigger priorities; Small budget declines expected across hardware, software and managed services
As in previous years, IT professionals in EMEA still plan to spend a majority of their 2017 IT budgets on hardware and software, yet the budget allocated for hardware is expected to slightly decrease by one percentage point to 35 percent and budget for software is expected to decrease by three percentage points to 28 percent. IT budget allocations for managed service projects will also slightly decrease by one percentage point to 13 percent. However, 17 percent of IT budgets will be spent on hosted/cloud-based service projects in 2017, a three point increase in budget year over year. Thirty-nine percent of IT professionals in EMEA also said cloud and hosted services are very or extremely important to their current business practices compared to 28 percent last year.
Budget highlights within each category include:
- In hardware, 18 percent of budgets will be spent on servers in 2017. Additionally, hardware budget allocations for laptops surpassed desktops in EMEA as laptop allocations remained flat year over year at 16 percent and desktop allocations decreased by six percentage points to 14 percent.
- Fifteen percent of software budgets will be spent on virtualization, 12 percent will be spent on operating systems, such as Windows 10 upgrades, and 12 percent will be spent on CRM/ERP software.
- Fifteen percent of hosted/cloud-based services budgets in EMEA will be spent on email hosting, and 14 percent of budgets will be spend on online backup and recovery after increasing by four percentage points year over year. Web hosting fell to third on the list after slightly decreasing by three percentage points to 12 percent.
- In managed services, 18 percent of budgets will be spent on IT service providers, 15 percent on consulting, and 14 percent on hosting services.
Technology end-of-life is number one driver of IT investments
In terms of what’s driving investments in new hardware, software, and services in 2017, 68 percent of IT professionals in EMEA cited technology end-of-life (EOL) as the number one purchase driver, followed by additional needs due to company growth at 63 percent. 55 percent of IT professionals said technology upgrades and refresh cycles will drive IT investments in 2017. However, technology upgrades can be delayed due to budget and time constraints.
Looking ahead to 2017, both Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista will reach their end of support dates next year. However, Spiceworks network data shows Office 2007 is still installed in 51 percent of businesses across the globe in Spiceworks. While Windows Vista is only running in 10 percent of businesses in Spiceworks, Windows XP is still running in 56 percent, despite reaching its EOL in 2014. Spiceworks data also shows Windows Server 2003 is running in 52 percent of businesses despite its EOL in 2015.
IT professionals select Google, Amazon, and Microsoft as “top brands to watch” in 2017
For the first time in the State of IT, IT professionals were asked in a Spiceworks social poll about what brands they’re most excited about in terms of bringing innovative technology to the workplace in 2017. Google topped the list with 49 percent of IT professionals saying it’s an innovative tech company to watch next year. Amazon ranked second at 34 percent and Microsoft came in third at 21 percent. The top 10 list of the most innovative companies to watch in 2017 also included Apple, Nvidia, Samsung, VMware, Intel, Cisco, and Ubiquiti.
Methdology
Spiceworks conducted a survey in July 2016 including 886 respondents from North America and EMEA. Respondents are among the millions of IT professionals in Spiceworks and represent a variety of company sizes including small-to-medium-sized businesses as well as enterprises. Respondents come from a variety of industries including manufacturing, healthcare, non-profits, education, government, and finance. The survey data was supplemented with Spiceworks network data collected in September 2016, based on anonymized, aggregated deployment data from IT professionals across the globe that use Spiceworks to inventory their organisation’s laptops, desktops, software, operating systems, and more. For more information and a complete list of survey results, visit www.spiceworks.com/marketing/state-of-it/report/.
About Spiceworks Voice of IT
Spiceworks’ Voice of IT shares statistics, trends, and opinions collected from millions of IT professionals on the global technology issues that are important to them. For other Spiceworks Voice of IT reports and snapshots visit: www.spiceworks.com/research.
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