Technology Reseller - v31

01732 759725 06 TECH TRENDS Coronavirus accelerates cloud infrastructure investment A survey of 250 IT leaders in the UK, US and Canada by Snow Software, a provider of technology intelligence solutions, highlights the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic and recession are changing organisations’ use of technology. More than three quarters (82%) say they have increased their cloud usage as a result of lockdown and 60% plan to continue to increase it now that people are returning to their workplaces. Two thirds (66%) say they plan to keep on using the cloud services and applications implemented during the crisis. Snow Software points out that although video meeting apps (e.g. Zoom, Cisco WebEx and GoToMeeting) and communication apps (e.g. Slack, Teams and Google Chat) grabbed the headlines, being cited as ‘lifesavers’ by 73% and 65% of respondents respectively, the biggest contributor to the increase in cloud usage is cloud infrastructure, with 76% of respondents increasing their use of cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and private cloud. Snow Software adds that the experience of lockdown and the economic outlook have caused 91% to alter their cloud strategy, with plans to accelerate cloud migration (45%) and digital transformation (41%) twice as popular as plans to put such initiatives on hold (22% and 21% respectively). www.snowsoftware.com/int IT sector resilient despite pause in software/hardware refreshes Almost one third of technology professionals have paused planned software implementations and hardware refreshes since March 2020, according to a survey of 150 technology professionals by Microsoft specialist Crimson. It believes that this trend is indicative of a major priority realignment taking place within the enterprise, with plans to accelerate Cloud, Automation and Cyber Security for more secure and effective remote working. Crimson’s research shows that while new projects may have paused since Coronavirus first brought the UK to a standstill, the IT sector has shown remarkable resilience, with 70% of IT departments forgoing the Government’s furlough scheme in order to continue to provide critical business operations. Just over a quarter of survey respondents said they are looking to hire or on-board new IT staff in the next three months, suggesting that organisations are building remote on-boarding strategies and will require additional bandwidth or skills to make this happen. Despite short- term delays, projected IT budgets have remained stable, with 41% of respondents intending to keep their budgets at pre- Coronavirus levels and 27% increasing overall budgets. Thirty-two per cent have cut budgets due to the pandemic. https://info.crimson.co.uk/ covid-19-benchmarking-the-impa ct On-prem workloads decline with shift to cloud COVID-19 has become a powerful catalyst for rapid cloud migration, reveals the LogicMonitor Cloud 2025 study. In the survey of 500 IT decision-makers in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, 87% said they expect to accelerate their cloud migration in a post-Covid world. Nearly three quarters (74%) believe that in the next five years 95% of all workloads will be in the cloud. The study reveals a corresponding decline in on-premises workloads driven by the rise in remote working. In the UK, prior to COVID-19, 38% of workloads resided on-prem, according to survey respondents. By 2025, this figure is expected to be just 21%. www.logicmonitor.com Risk of IT outages higher if cloud migration is put on hold The 30% of enterprises that halted cloud migration during the COVID-19 pandemic were two and a half times more likely to experience IT outages that negatively impacted their SLAs than those that continued their journey, reveals a new study by Virtana. The Current State of Hybrid Cloud and IT report also reveals that IT professionals who stopped their company’s cloud migration process were twice as likely to over-provision to ensure performance. UK workers struggle to master digital tools Workers in the UK’s 43,000 medium- sized businesses each waste 28 minutes per day, or 112 working hours over the course of a year, struggling with digital programmes or tools they don’t know how to use properly. Yet, 81% still feel that digital tools make working life better, more productive and more efficient. The worst sectors for time lost are data and IT, understandably as these industries have a higher usage of digital programmes. The hospitality industry also has a high number of lost hours, as its workers struggle with new digital tools such as booking systems, rota and time management systems, order at the table apps and POS (point of sale) systems. According to The Modern Worklife report from UX design and development agency Sigma, UK workers use an average of four digital tools for work, with 6% using more than nine. www.wearesigma.com/modernworklife/ Print to be productive Working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic is leading to less printing overall as employees pivot to digital collaboration, but employees who do still print are more likely to report productivity gains, reveals new Home Worker research from Quocirca. Key findings from its survey of 501 UK home-working employees include: n 77% of office workers based at home have access to a printer, though only 5% are supplied by their employer; 14% purchased a printer themselves when they started working from home. n 52% print less than they did in the office, including 24% who don’t print at all. More than one quarter (28%) say the amount they print has increased significantly. n 75% of new home workers say their productivity has increased (41%) or stayed the same (34%). Among those who report higher levels of productivity, 64% state that they are printing more vs. 30% who say they are printing less or not at all. n 41% of those who have reduced printing say they need fewer printed documents now that there are no face-to- face meetings or physical signatures. Quocirca’s research suggests that office-based workers who may have been printing regularly out of habit are now adapting to digital alternatives. However, Tech trends: ICT in the UK today COVID-19:Benchmarking the ImpactonTechnologyDepartments May 2020 www.crimson.co.uk