Survey and Report: Converged Infrastructure Benefits Are Clear Despite Sluggish Adoption Among Small-to-Medium Sized Enterprises
Mount Pleasant, SC (PRWEB) September 30, 2013 -- eGroup, the Southeast’s leading provider of cloud, application and end-user computing services, today announced results of a new survey which reveals adoption rates, benefits and concerns of converged infrastructure systems within small-to-medium sized enterprise information technology (IT) departments.
The survey was conducted by Spiceworks with more than 300 North American IT professionals and the findings were used to develop the white paper “Converged Infrastructure: Making the Move From Buzzword to Big Hit in SMB,” which reveals that, despite the obvious benefits around infrastructure optimization and fast deployment cycles, SMB IT professionals remain somewhat slow to adopt converged infrastructure systems.
“Converged Infrastructure: Making the Move From Buzzword to Big Hit in SMB” is currently available for download on eGroup’s Website.
According to the results, 88 percent of those respondents familiar with converged infrastructure stated that converged solutions would be valuable for their organization, with 36 percent stating it would be very or extremely valuable.
That said, adoption of converged infrastructure remains a mixed bag.
For example, less than half responded that they have implemented or are planning to implement a converged infrastructure in the next 24 months. While 53 percent answered that they have not implemented nor have any plans to implement in the immediate future.
John Flisher, Technical Consultant Manager, eGroup, commented: “Though the results do show a slow adoption curve, given the conversations and current interest eGroup is seeing in the field, we expect this to change significantly over the next 18 months.
"It comes down to education and helping SMB customers understand the real and immediate benefits converged infrastructures are capable of delivering. And with half of the respondents of our survey claiming unfamiliarity of the term ‘converged infrastructure,’ the vendor and solution provider industries need to do a much better job at defining it for the customer. Which is a key goal of the report.”
When researching various converged infrastructure solutions, IT pros evaluate a number of different considerations, with the most important being implementation cost. 71 percent of respondents who are using or plan to use a converged infrastructure solution claimed “Implementation Cost” was a primary consideration in vendor selection, while 67 percent said “Customer Support/Service Levels” and 60 percent responded “Solution Performance.” The remaining answers included “Scalability Options,” “Vendor Reputation,” and “Security/Regulatory Compliance,” at 55 percent, 43 percent, and 33 percent, respectively.
Additional survey highlights of respondents who are using or planning to use a converged infrastructure include:
• 70 percent are running (or planning to run) databases on their company’s converged infrastructure.
• File and print, business process applications, industry-specific applications and Email and collaboration close out the top five workloads with 46 percent, 43 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent, respectively.
• The most important features of converged infrastructure solutions are resource scalability, optimization for their workloads and having a single point of contact for support.
• 66 percent are concerned with vendor lock-in while 53 percent are concerned with less control over individual components.
Flisher continued: “I’m hopeful that SMB IT leadership can move beyond the converged infrastructure hype, which may have led to the market confusion revealed in the report, and truly see the potential value to the organization and their shareholders. In an environment where our customers are increasingly required to do more with less, we believe that focusing on reducing infrastructure complexity through converged infrastructure solutions, as opposed to individual components of the data center, will ultimately provide them with a competitive advantage.”
“Converged Infrastructure: Making the Move From Buzzword to Big Hit in SMB” is currently available for download on eGroup’s Website.
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Survey Methodology
The survey was conducted through Spiceworks’ Voice of IT research program and included 300 North American respondents. The majority of those surveyed work in organizations with less than 1,000 employees and are among the more than 2.5 million IT professionals in the Spiceworks Community.
About eGroup
Headquartered in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., eGroup provides innovative cloud, application and end-user computing services to businesses across the Southeast. One of the region’s fastest growing companies and winner of the 2013 CRN “Tech Elite 250,” eGroup’s solutions drive customer revenue while reducing cost to maintain IT infrastructures. Visit http://www.eGroup-us.com or call 1.877.eGROUP.1 (1.877.347.6871) for more information.
Rich Young, eGroup, http://www.egroup-us.com, +1 (843)323-0610, [email protected]
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