Enterprise Strategy Group X Research Reports

2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey

John McKnight — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:39:00 +0000

In order to assess IT spending priorities over the next 12-18 months, ESG recently surveyed 614 senior IT professionals representing midmarket (100 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations in North America, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific. All respondents were personally responsible for or familiar with their organizations’ 2011 IT spending as well as their 2012 IT budget and spending plans at either an entire organization level or at a business unit/division/branch level.

The survey was designed to answer the following questions:

What business imperatives are currently having the greatest impact on IT spending?
What are organizations’ general spending plans for IT products and services in 2012 and beyond?
How do spending plans vary by organization size, geographic region, industry, and other variables?
What is driving the changes between 2011 spending and 2012 planned spending?
What do organizations identify as their most important IT priorities over the next 12-18 months?
What factors will be most important in justifying IT investments to the business over the next 12-18 months?
Within specific technology segments—such as cloud computing, virtualization, storage, networking, and security—which initiatives and technologies will sustain investment over the next 12-18 months?
What is the relationship between an organization’s current and future IT spending and its overall purchasing pattern for IT products and services?

Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, health care, communications and media, retail, government, and business services.

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report 2012 IT Spending Intentions Executive Summary

Data Center Networking Trends

Jon Oltsik — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:25:15 +0000

The primary objective of this ESG research study was to survey networking professionals working at enterprise organizations (i.e., 1,000 employees or more) in order to better understand the changes taking place in their data centers, how these changes were impacting their network infrastructure and operations, how they were addressing data center networking challenges in the short-term, and what they were planning for data center networking as they looked to future business and technical requirements.

To assess these issues, ESG asked 280 networking professionals to respond to questions in areas including:

Data center strategy
- How many data centers do large organizations have today?
- Are large organizations consolidating data centers? If so, how many data centers do they hope to eliminate? Are they consolidating discrete business unit data centers into multi-tenant mega-centers?
- Are they extending applications or IT operations across multiple data centers? If so, which specific applications and IT operations activities are being extended?
- Is server virtualization a substantial component of their data center strategy? How will the use of server virtualization change in the future?
Data center networking environment
- What types of data center networking architectures are in place today?
- How are networks segmented? Why is some segmentation done at Layer 2 and some at Layer 3?
- What is the standard server-to-network interface today? How will this change in the future?
- What is the standard data center network cabling infrastructure today? How will this change in the future?
- How is networking equipment provisioned and managed?
- What is the role of virtual switches today? How will this change?
- What is the impact of web applications on data center networks?
Data center networking operations challenges
- What types of network operations problems do large organizations face today?
- What are the biggest network operations challenges?
- Which network operations activities are most costly and time consuming?
Data center networking adaptation
- How is the networking organization changing to adjust to data center scaling and operational requirements?
- Are large organizations adopting new data center networking technologies? If so, which ones?
- Are enterprises implementing converged data center networks (i.e. common network for storage and data traffic)? If so, why and how?
- What changes are taking place in order to support more server-to-server web application traffic within the data center?
Data center networking strategy
- Which data center networking technology innovations are users aware of?
- Are enterprises interested in data center network fabric architecture? Will they implement data center network fabrics over time?

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report Data Center Networking Trends Executive Summary

Click the picture for a PDF of the Data Center Networking Infographic.

Solid-state Storage Market Trends

Mark Peters — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:43:55 +0000

In order to assess the market trends involving the current usage and potential adoption of solid-state storage, ESG recently surveyed 223 IT decision-makers responsible for data storage at enterprise-class (i.e., 1,000 or more employees) organizations that either currently use solid-state storage or are considering using the technology. Respondents were familiar with their organization’s current storage environment as well as forward-looking strategies involving solid-state storage technologies.

The survey was designed to answer the following questions:

What concerns do potential adopters, as well as those with no plans to deploy solid-state storage, have with regard to the technology? Similarly, what challenges have current users experienced?
What solid-state storage implementation types have current users deployed? If they plan to make additional purchases, will they use the same technology? What do potential adopters expect to use?
What drove initial deployments of solid-state storage? How does this vary—if at all—among potential adopters?
How extensive are current solid-state storage deployments?
What benefits have current users of solid-state storage derived from the technology? What benefits do potential adopters expect to realize?
Are current and future solid-state storage purchases being driven by the need to alleviate the performance challenges associated with any specific application(s)? Which applications?
What impact—if any—has server virtualization had on current and potential deployments of solid-state storage?
What is the relationship—if any—between automated tiered storage and solid-state storage?
How do current and potential users view the longer-term opportunity for solid-state storage?
How important is the brand of the underlying solid-state storage components, and does it impact purchase decisions?

Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, communications and media, health care, retail, government, and business services.

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report Solid-state Storage Market Trends Executive Summary

U.S. Advanced Persistent Threat Analysis

Jon Oltsik — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:50:49 +0000

The primary objective of this ESG research study was to survey security professionals working at enterprise organizations (i.e., 1,000 employees or more) in order to better understand their familiarity with and opinions about Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), whether they believed their organizations had been targeted by APTs, how vulnerable their organizations were to future APT attacks, and what their organizations were doing in response to APTs.

For consistency, respondents were provided with the definition of Advanced Persistent Threat used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST):

An adversary that possesses sophisticated levels of expertise and significant resources which allow it to create opportunities to achieve its objectives by using multiple attack vectors (e.g., cyber, physical, and deception). These objectives typically include establishing and extending footholds within the information technology infrastructure of the targeted organizations for purposes of exfiltrating (i.e., transporting it from internal networks to external drop servers) information, undermining or impeding critical aspects of a mission, program, or organization; or positioning itself to carry out these objectives in the future. The advanced persistent threat: (i) pursues its objectives repeatedly over an extended period of time; (ii) adapts to defenders’ efforts to resist it; and (iii) is determined to maintain the level of interaction needed to execute its objectives.

To assess these issues, ESG asked 244 security professionals to respond to questions in areas including:

APT awareness and viewpoints
- How familiar are security professionals with APTs?
- Do they believe that APTs are unique or similar to historical “low and slow” attacks?Do they believe that APTs represent an intrinsic threat to U.S. vital interests like national security and economic prosperity?
- Do they believe that social networking sites like Facebook increase the likelihood of an APT?
- Do they believe that the U.S. federal government is doing a sufficient job with specific cybersecurity and APT programs and legislation?
Direct APT experience
- Do U.S.-based enterprise organizations believe they have been the target of APT attacks?
- Do these organizations believe they will continue to be the target of APT attacks in the future?
- Which adversaries do security professionals believe are most likely to be responsible for APTs?
- Are enterprise organizations vulnerable to future APT attacks?
Security processes, skills, and technologies
- What are organizations doing to protect themselves from APTS today?
- Where are they strongest and weakest in terms of processes, skills, and technology safeguards?
- How effective are they at detecting and responding to security attacks?
- What specific controls are they using to protect sensitive data?
- What specific controls are they using for endpoint security?
APT responses
- Are executive managers getting more involved with cybersecurity activities as a result of recent, visible APT attacks? If so, what actions are they taking?
- Have organizations modified security processes as a direct result of APTs? If so, what have they changed?
- Have organizations increased security training as a result of APTs?
- Are organizations increasing security budgets as a result of APTs? If so, by how much?

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary and infographic below.

ESG Research Report U.S. Advanced Persistent Threat Analysis Executive Summary

Click the picture for a PDF of the ESG Infographic: U.S. Advanced Persistent Threat Analysis

For previous ESG research focusing on Information Security, please see the freely-available ESG Research Report, Assessing Cyber Supply Chain Security Vulnerabilities Within the U.S. Critical Infrastructure.

For more information on Jon Oltsik and ESG’s Information Security practice, click here.

Application Retirement Trends

Bill Lundell — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:40:20 +0000

In order to assess current data management trends, as well as plans for the next 12-18 months, ESG recently surveyed 270 North American IT professionals representing large midmarket (500 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations. Respondents were familiar with their organization’s current database and legacy application environment, as well as forward-looking plans application retirement.

For the purposes of this survey, “legacy applications” were defined as applications that are no longer used to support active business processes.

The survey was designed to answer the following questions:

How many legacy applications do organizations currently support?
What gives an application legacy status?
Why do organizations keep legacy applications running?
How much does it cost organizations annually to maintain legacy applications?
Do organizations have plans to decommission applications over the next 12-18 months?
What methods do organizations employ to retain decommissioned application data?
Which functional groups are involved with application decommissioning projects?

Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, communications and media, health care, and retail.

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report Application Retirement Trends Executive Summary

e-Discovery Market Trends: A View from the Legal Department

Brian Babineau — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 17:48:53 +0000

In order to assess the state of enterprise e-discovery operations and priorities over 2011 and beyond, ESG recently surveyed 48 general counsel representing large midmarket (500 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations. All respondents were personally responsible for or familiar with their organizations’ 2010 legal services and e-discovery spending, as well as their 2011 budget and spending plans at either an organizational or a business unit/division/branch level.

Specifically, the survey asked the following questions with respect to e-discovery and legal services:

What are current trends in the volume of corporate legal or regulatory matters, and the percentage of those involving electronically stored information (ESI)?
What is the internal strategy for corporations in managing e-discovery processes among cross-functional business units? Who leads decision-making in both internal and outsourced resourcing?
What are current corporate expenses associated with e-discovery, as well as for legal services in general? Is performance being tracked, measured, or evaluated in terms of outcomes, and how?
What are corporate selection criteria for law firms and legal service providers? What are customer priorities in service delivery?
To what extent are corporate litigants performing e-discovery internally, and how? What are their greatest challenges in the process? What provisions are they making for court defensibility?
Which e-discovery technology and methods are corporate litigants using, planning to adopt, or rejecting?
What are the most important go-forward priorities within the enterprise for internal e-discovery and better overall litigation preparedness?

Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, communications and media, health care, retail, government, and business services.

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report e-Discovery Market Trends Executive Summary

The Impact of Big Data on Data Analytics

Bill Lundell — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:34:38 +0000

In order to assess current data analytics and data management trends, as well as plans for the next 12-18 months, ESG recently surveyed 270 North American IT professionals representing large midmarket (500 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations. Respondents were familiar with their organization’s current database environment as well as forward-looking strategies involving data analytics and integration initiatives.

The survey was designed to answer the following questions:

How important is the enhancement of data analytics capabilities relative to all of an organization’s IT priorities?
What challenges do organizations face with respect to their current data analytics technologies and processes?
How do organizations plan to deal with larger data sets during data analytics exercises?
What are organizations’ spending plans for data analytics in 2011 and beyond?
How are organizations planning to address their data analytics and data integration challenges?
What is driving the adoption or need for a MapReduce compute platform?
What challenges do organizations face with respect to their data integration needs?
How does data growth impact organizations in general?

Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, communications and media, health care, and retail.

Click for a PDF of the ESG Infographic: Big Data.

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report The Impact of Big Data on Data Analytics Executive Summary

The Impact of Cloud Computing on the Channel

Bill Lundell — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:53:09 +0000

In order to assess the impact of cloud computing services on resellers, ESG recently surveyed 187 senior business and technical managers at value-add channel organizations in North America. For the purposes of this study, ESG sought organizations identifying themselves as resellers, VARs, solution providers, managed services providers, or global and regional systems integrators. To ensure a focus on the traditional product resell channel, managed services providers were limited to a maximum of 20% of the respondents. Distributors were not included as respondents. All respondents were familiar with their organization’s revenue models, value-add service offerings, and service offerings related to partnerships with cloud service providers as well as direct customer business related to cloud computing services.

Specifically, the survey asked the following questions with respect to the current and planned resale of cloud computing services:[1]

What actual demand are you seeing for cloud computing solutions from your customers?
What factors are motivating you to include cloud services as part of your portfolio?
What steps are you taking to support your overall cloud strategy?
What are the most important attributes of a cloud service provider channel program?
What changes are you making to your business model to address the cloud computing opportunity?
How often are SaaS or IaaS options included in sales proposals and are customers requesting these options?
What are the biggest challenges you face in transitioning to selling cloud computing services?
How do you compensate your salespeople for recurring revenue deals such as cloud computing contracts?
Would you prefer to work with pure cloud service providers or resell cloud services offered by your current technology (i.e., hardware and software) vendors?
Have you lost business to a cloud service provider where you were proposing an on-premises product-based solution? If so, how often?
What is your strategy for developing new relationships with cloud service providers?
How important is the specific technology with which a cloud provider runs its infrastructure to you and your customers?
What steps can your current product vendor partners take to help you be more successful in selling cloud computing services?
What should the role of traditional technology distributors be in cloud computing?
How do these answers differ by size of sales organization?

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report The Impact of Cloud Computing on the Channel Executive Summary

[1] Note: Cloud computing questions in this survey focused on “software-as-a-service” (or SaaS) and “infrastructure-as-a-service” (IaaS) offerings. So-called “platform-as-a-service” (PaaS) offerings are beyond the scope of this particular study.

Remote Office/Branch Office Technology Trends

Bill Lundell — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:47:59 +0000

In order to determine the IT priorities and challenges currently faced by remote office/branch office (ROBO) locations, and how organizations plan to address those challenges, ESG recently surveyed 454 North American senior IT professionals representing midmarket (100 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations. All respondents worked at headquarters locations or other centralized corporate sites and were responsible for ROBO IT operations and/or strategy, including the delivery of IT services to these locations, authorization of expenditures, or establishment and enforcement of corporate IT policies for remote/branch offices. Respondent organizations were required to have at least two ROBO locations to qualify for the survey.

The survey was designed to answer the following questions:

How many ROBO locations do organizations currently support?
What is the average number of employees that work at each ROBO location? What is the largest ROBO in terms of number of employees?
What percentage of ROBO locations has dedicated on-site IT staff? How do organizations determine which locations qualify for on-site resources?
What percentage of an organization’s total IT budget is dedicated to supporting ROBOs?
What are the top ROBO IT priorities? What are the top networking and security challenges when it comes to supporting the IT needs of remote/branch offices?
How are the majority of corporate applications and/or IT services delivered to users at ROBO locations?
What benefits do organizations derive from delivering corporate applications and/or IT services to its ROBO locations?
What challenges do organizations face in delivering corporate applications and/or IT services to its ROBO locations? What steps have they taken to address these challenges?
How many servers do organizations have deployed at a typical ROBO location? How does this vary by the average number of employees per ROBO?
How extensive is server virtualization usage at ROBO locations? What benefits has the technology yielded?
On average, approximately how much data storage capacity is deployed at the typical ROBO location? How does this vary by the server count or number of employees at the typical ROBO location?
What type of external disk storage system is the most widely used at ROBO locations? How does this vary by average ROBO storage capacity levels?
What is the primary data protection process organizations deploy at their ROBO locations?
For those organizations performing on-site backup operations at ROBOs, is disk or tape the preferred storage media? Who is typically responsible for backup operations and media management at these locations?
Do these organizations have any plans to centralize their backup processes? If yes, why?
For those organizations backing up their data to a central location, what drove them to this model and what challenges—if any—have they experienced?

Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, communications and media, health care, retail, government, and business services.

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report Remote Office/Branch Office Technology Trends Executive Summary

Also, be sure to listen to ESG Senior Analyst Bob Laliberte in a podcast discussion of some of the research findings.

Cloud Computing Adoption Trends

Garrett Doherty — Mon, 16 May 2011 15:48:24 +0000

In order to assess IT spending priorities over 2011 and beyond, ESG recently surveyed 611 North American and Western European senior IT professionals representing midmarket (100 to 999 employees) and enterprise-class (1,000 employees or more) organizations. All respondents were personally responsible for or familiar with their organizations’ 2010 IT spending as well as their 2011 IT budget and spending plans at either an entire organization level or at a business unit/division/branch level. A subset of ESG’s questions in this survey focused on respondents’ usage of and plans for public cloud computing services.

Specifically, the survey asked the following questions with respect to cloud computing services:

What impact will public cloud computing services have on organizations’ traditional IT infrastructure and processes over the next five years?
Among organizations that believe public cloud computing will have little or no impact on their IT strategies, what are these customers’ leading objections or concerns?
How does cloud computing sentiment vary by organization size, IT budget, and other variables?
What are the usage trends for SaaS (software-as-a-service), and how do they vary by organization size?
What types of applications are being delivered via the SaaS model?
What percentage of organizations’ current applications is delivered via a SaaS model? How will this change over time?
Who are the primary internal advocates for the usage of SaaS?
What are the usage trends for IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service), and how do they vary by company size and the scope of on-site IT infrastructure?
What portion of 2011 IT budgets will organizations earmark for spending on SaaS and/or IaaS services?

Survey participants represented a wide range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, communications and media, health care, retail, government, and business services.

For more information on the contents and findings of this report, please download the executive summary below.

ESG Research Report Cloud Computing Adoption Trends Executive Summary