A quarter of UK SMBs lack confidence in their network's ability to support future workloads, finds report

A further five per cent "not at all confident" about tomorrow's hardware demands

A quarter of UK SMBs have little to no confidence that their existing network infrastructure will be able to support future business-critical workloads, a Computing survey has found.

The survey, carried out as part of a white paper entitled Getting the small business data centre just right in association with HPE and Intel, shows a noticeable gap between the confidence levels of SMBs that their networks can support current workloads, and those that lie in the future.

While 50 per cent of SMBs in the survey class themselves as "confident" that current workloads are supported, only 21 per cent say the same about the future.

Meanwhile, while six per cent say they're not very confident now, 18 per cent say that they have little confidence about the future.

A whole five per cent class themselves as "not at all confident" about their network's abilities to handle future workloads, compared to nobody believing the same about today's technology.

Nearly half - 42 per cent - of those questioned described the equipment in their data centres and server racks as "ageing, but with the odd bit of new technology thrown in to support specific projects".

The study identifies a need for SMBs to take a careful look at their technology and its ability to cope with growing trends such as big data.

At the very least, it appears SMBs should seek advice about what the future may bring, and how well their hardware is positioned to weather the storm.

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