I
T software budgets have increased or remained the same for most SMEs over the past five years, research from SolarWinds has found.
In its Time and Budget Spent on IT study, the provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, pointed out that despite this, more than three quarters of the 500 companies asked said that on average, 12 per cent of software purchases still go unused.
Just over two thirds of the SMEs asked said they had an IT manager who is principally responsible for addressing IT issues, although in over 30 percent of organisations, the business owner or manager fulfils this role.
Almost one third of respondents said that IT was not their main responsibility within their organization, yet despite this, they admitted to spending up to 30 percent of their time managing IT issues.
Nearly all those asked – 87 percent – also grassed up their IT mates claiming that
that up to half of purchased IT software was not utilised. Of this group, 28 per cent said that up to a fifth of software purchased goes unused.
While budgets increased or remained the same in most industry sectors, companies in financial services and manufacturing were more likely to have reduced IT budgets the most in the last five years. And although IT spending is important to SMEs, budgets are small with one in five companies spending just £1,500 (~$2,000) on IT software each year.
More than a quarter of those in the UK who said that IT budgets had decreased or remained the same, stated that this had a detrimental impact on IT security and uptime. This was in comparison to Germany where less than ten percent felt that flat budgets had a negative impact on IT security and uptime.
