Mid-sized enterprises adopting new technology faster: study

According to a recent survey,mid-sized enterprises are adopting new technologies such as cloud computing,storage virtualisation and continuous data protection 10-15 per cent more than large enterprises to reduce IT costs and manage increasing complexity.

Pune has a significant presence of mid-sized enterprises. The study,conducted by Symantec,says mid-sized enterprise data centres show more activity,with more IT managers predicting major changes to the data centre and new applications in 2010. Mid-sized enterprises also place a higher importance on staffing and training than their small or large enterprise counterparts.

“Although mid-sized enterprises tend to evaluate and adopt new technologies at a faster rate than larger organisations,they still face similar data centre complexities that are compounded by adopting new initiatives,” said Anand Naik,director,systems engineering,Symantec.

According to the Symantec study,security,backup,recovery and continuous data protection are the most important initiatives of the companies in 2010,ahead of virtualisation. About 68 per cent of enterprises rated security absolutely important,62 percent said backup and recovery is important and 60 per cent rated continuous data protection as one of their top initiatives.

Top data centre concerns include increased complexity and too many applications. Most enterprises have 10 or more data centre initiatives rated as somewhat or absolutely important and 50 per cent expect ‘significant’ changes to their data centres in 2010.

“Standardising on cross-platform solutions that can manage new technologies and automate processes will drive immediate cost reduction and make their jobs easier in the long run,” said Naik.

Staffing and budgets remain tight with half of all enterprises reporting they are somewhat or extremely understaffed.

Finding budget and qualified applicants are the biggest recruiting issues. About 79 per cent of enterprises have the same or more job requisitions open this year.

“One-third of all enterprises say staff productivity is hampered by too many applications. Adding to the complexity is the continued increase in data causing 52 per cent of organisations to consider data reduction technologies such as de-duplication,controlling storage growth as one of the major data centre objectives for Indian mid-sized enterprises for 2010,” the report says.