Although this year’s findings are slightly down from the 70% of SMEs that expected to increase their IT budget in 2014, 7% of SMEs still expect to increase their technology spend by more than 10%, while only 1 in 20 are anticipating a decrease.
As businesses’ reliance on IT services increases so it seems that reliability is increasingly the primary focus for SMEs. Two thirds of those surveyed singled out Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity as an IT service that is critical to their business, while over a quarter of respondents said that the reliability of their IT infrastructure was a key concern. 23% of those surveyed also highlighted security as a key issue and 24% were concerned that their IT infrastructure is reliant on hardware that might fail.
This shift in emphasis is reflected in the fact that when asked what they would spend their additional IT budget on, 27% said they would invest in IT infrastructure to lessen their burden and worry.
“Of course IT infrastructure is vital to how businesses operate today - however it is noteworthy that so many SMEs would rather not have the headache of the day-to-day administration and management of their infrastructure that can be complicated, tedious and time-consuming,” commented Paul Bryce, Business Development Director, Node4. “And frankly, nor should businesses have to worry about that. The technology exists to free in-house IT staff from the mundane admin of infrastructure, enabling them to add significantly more value to their organisations through application and service development. It’s why companies like Node4 exist and we believe it is the future of how IT should be delivered - so it is interesting to see that reflected in the demands from SMEs in our research.”