UK-based organisations are largely spending their IT budgets on tools and services to further enable remote working.
According to the latest research from Delta, Cloud IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service), and connectivity, including WAN (Wide Area Networks) and networking technologies, top spending plans.
More than 16 percent of respondents expressed an intention to purchase IaaS and PaaS technologies, while ten percent said that networking technologies were their priority. Business continuity and disaster recovery was eight percent of respondents, just ahead of end user compute and security software with seven percent each.
There was a wide range of budgets for these projects, reflecting both the scaling possibilities within these technologies, and the range of organisations surveyed. Budgets ranged from £15,000 to £20 million at the top end.
Timescales also differed vastly between organisations, with 30 percent of respondents expecting the project to take three to six months, 29 percent expecting it to take six to nine months and 20 percent suggesting that it would take 12 to 18 months.
Smaller proportions anticipated even lengthier programmes with 11 percent expecting full implementation to take 18 to 36 months, and two percent stating it would take over 36 months, suggesting that numerous other projects and facilities are wrapped up in the same programme.
When asked which department would be responsible for the new project, IT came out overwhelmingly on top, ahead of all line of business units. In total, IT is responsible for 64 percent of new projects, with finance the next department most likely to be in charge at five percent.
Respondents admitted to a broad range of risks to the delivery of these projects, with timescale just ahead of the rest at 40 per cent. Integration and budgetary issues were the next highest risks at 36 percent each.
Other risks were lower down the chain, with lack of necessary skills at 27 percent, security at 21 percent, and user adoption at 19 percent.
There proved to be a wide variety of ways in which organisations choose their suppliers, according to respondents. More than 41 per cent said that they have a policy of sticking with existing suppliers where possible, with the same number saying they look to see what other organisations are using, often involving attending industry virtual events
More than 34 percent use market intelligence services like Delta in their supplier selection process, which turned out to be just ahead, in terms of popularity, of those who use consultants, at 31 percent. 25 percent said that they use industry frameworks, with many of these organisations in the public sector.
