After a year where IT in SMBs around the globe took center stage in the rush to support remote work during a pandemic, we wanted to see how things stood and what challenges and opportunities IT organizations have on their mind going forward. The annual Kaseya IT operation survey queried more than 900 leaders responsible for IT functions at companies with fewer than 3,000 employees to find out.
Overall, we found most businesses were investing more in IT and broadening the scope of services for which they’re in the market. While many rapidly ramped up some aspects of their IT infrastructure to survive and thrive in 2020, they’re far from done with these transformations.
Here are some of the main findings of interest to MSPs:
It’s Still Partly Cloudy
The great cloud migration continues in 2021, as 36% of SMBs rank this as a top priority for the year. The most popular configuration is a hybrid public-private cloud strategy, which is used by 65% of SMBs.
This is driving spending increases in this domain, as 54% of companies are increasing their IaaS spend and 36% are devoting more money to SaaS expenses. The most common SaaS solutions used by SMBs are Microsoft365 (77%), Google Workspace (28%) and Salesforce.com (26%).
At the same time, those legacy systems that haven’t yet made the move to the cloud or other modern platforms continue holding some SMBs back. 24% said they’re hampering growth and innovation by slowing things down and limiting what’s possible.
However, this problem may not persist for some of those SMBs, as 52% of companies are allocating a portion of their budget to modernize and update their legacy systems, which is the top driver for getting additional IT dollars this year.
Read the complete blog post at Channel Futures.
