Hardware Spending to Continue in 2011

 

Moving slightly up the charts ? last year it was at #9 ? is the ongoing hardware refresh, spurred by aging systems, reduced inventories and the release of Windows 7. We expect this trend to continue into a second year, possibly even more strongly than the numbers here indicate.

For one thing, hardware infrastructure was the area cited by our survey respondents as being least likely to experience reduced investment at their organization, even with the continued business emphasis on reduced capital investment.

Another thing is simply the continuing extent to which firms expect significant investment in hardware next year. Forty-three percent of organizations said so, and most of them expect that investment to be bigger than 2010?s by a wide margin.

Storage systems look similarly strong in 2011. If these figures don?t quite impress, consider this: Thirty-seven percent of the organizations we surveyed are going to increase their hardware consolidation efforts as well, something you?d normally expect to be a drag on new equipment deployments.

?It?s a good thing to do as leases run out and you get the chance to consolidate while replacing the old with the new,?says Stephen Pickett, CIO at Penske in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. ?Passing the disaster recovery test is an important part of the process because you don?t want to have a service manager in California who has work to do but can?t do it because the server isn?t working.?

We figure that hardware is going to get outsized attention for some time.