More confident IT chiefs spark rise in investment

IT directors are once again investing in new systems, with security and business continuity their top concerns. reports on Computing's annual ImageTrak survey

Confidence and investment in technology is slowly returning, according to exclusive Computing research.

Our annual ImageTrak survey polled more than 5,000 IT and finance
managers, and the research suggests that IT directors are once again prepared to purchase new systems and take advantage of IT services.

Security is the top technology planning priority. Just over three-quarters (76 per cent) of respondents believe system security will be very important to IT
strategy in the next 12 to 18 months.

Continuity and how IT supports strategy are also vital business issues, and ImageTrak suggests investment is being directed at business growth, rather than purely cost management and reduction.

ImageTrak asks respondents about their satisfaction and perception of
suppliers in a range of IT areas, including business applications, security and IT
services. The survey also highlights spending priorities in sectors such as finance, local government and education. The broad conclusions from the report are:

Telecoms and networking
Cisco and 3Com dominate ImageTrak’s satisfaction criteria and overall have a
10 per cent margin of leadership over their closest competitors.

Duncan Mitchell, vice president and managing director of Cisco Systems UK and Ireland, says the convergence of communication and IT will continue to lead to basic changes in networking.

‘Businesses and service providers are focused on integration and convergence as a way to improve competitive advantage,’ he says.

Business applications
ImageTrak’s customer satisfaction results suggest customers demand a great deal from their software providers.

Some specialists, though, have impressed their customers, with Oracle topping the business applications chart. Ian Smith, senior vice president and managing director of Oracle UK, says the result vindicates the company’s belief that it is driving change in the applications market.

‘It validates the progress we have made to date with our strategy to build the best applications portfolio in the industry, and the huge efforts we’ve made to ease the transition for all our customers after the PeopleSoft merger,’ says Smith.

IT services
ImageTrak suggests a strong perception among the technology audience can help, with HP and IBM continuing to score highest on customer satisfaction.

Gerry Sheridan, vice president of HP’s technology solutions group for UK and Ireland, says it has invested $3.5bn (£1.89bn) in research and development during the 2005 financial year. ‘Our services team can apply cutting-edge innovation to create real-world business opportunities,’ he says.

More confident IT chiefs spark rise in investment

IT directors are once again investing in new systems, with security and business continuity their top concerns. reports on Computing's annual ImageTrak survey

Security
There is a strong vote of confidence in local UK vendors, with Sophos and MessageLabs achieving more than 80 per cent for average customer satisfaction.

Carmen Carey, chief operating officer of MessageLabs, says the company is delighted to have taken the top spot in customer satisfaction.

‘Our clients have to trust us. If there is a customer concern – and in a real-time environment, concerns arise from time to time – they need to have confidence and the belief that the concern will be solved,’ she says.

Client and server hardware
Chip suppliers perform well in the ImageTrak hardware chart, with Intel in third place and AMD in the top spot, improving its overall satisfaction rating by two per cent.
Dave Everitt, European product manager at AMD, is delighted to be leading ImageTrak’s client and server hardware satisfaction rankings.

‘We provide a migratory path for customers and architecture to match their needs,’ he says.

Storage
Companies are starting to buy big storage systems and software to support their development work.

Tim Pitcher, European vice president of strategy and business development at NetApp, says companies will need to deal with more data.

‘What we do see changing is our customers taking further steps to drive cost and complexity out of their business in a safe and secure way, through taking advantage of new technologies such as virtualisation and simple data management,’ he says.

Sector findings The finance sector is especially reliant on technology for the delivery of important customer and business services.

Finance businesses, ImageTrak suggests, prefer to spend on high-quality, established IT, rather than on untested innovation such as mobile technologies.
As in the finance sector, ImageTrak found that system security is the principal spending concern for IT professionals in the public sector.

Maintaining the balance between accessibility and security of information is
an important consideration for many areas of local and central government.
‘It’s one of the big challenges,’ says Eric Woods, government practice director at analyst Ovum.

But ImageTrak research suggests the education sector faces a unique set of challenges in IT planning. Although there is less direct commercial accountability than in the private sector, institutions face distinct cost and budget pressures.

The sector is also increasingly competitive and there is pressure for the consideration of emerging technologies, particularly around online learning.