Better management and automation tools top data centre priority in APJ
ConvergenceAsia staff
28/06/2007

According to IDC's "Continuum" End-User Survey 2007 conducted by IDC's Central Research Group in Asia Pacific, 33 per cent of respondents indicated that their major concern was to invest in better management and/or automation tools to reduce cost and improve efficiency when asked about key data centre priorities. Twenty eight per cent stated that they were focused on improving availability and uptime by buying more reliable servers, while 14 per cent of the respondents suggested that server virtualisation was their current priority.

The survey revealed that the overall PC purchasing plans would remain roughly the same level as last year, with 60 per cent of respondents across APJ indicating that they would purchase desktop and/or notebook PCs in 2007. Of these PCs that APJ firms plan to purchase in 2007, less than half will serve as replacement PCs, with the remaining majority as new purchases.

As expected, Windows Vista OS penetration in APJ was low in 2006 since the OS was not released until late in the year, and available initially only in certain countries. Looking ahead, 14 per cent of respondents in APJ indicated they would migrate to Vista over the next 12 months for either testing purposes or for partial or total PC deployment.

For those respondents who indicated that they had no plans to migrate to Vista, 59 per cent stated that their current version of the Windows OS did everything they needed. In addition, 14 per cent of this respondent group highlighted the fact that they would like to upgrade to Vista, but were concerned about the cost.

In terms of top overall business goals for 2007, 23 per cent of respondents identified "reducing cost" as the key objectives for their organisations going forward, while 23 per cent chose expanding business in current or new geographical markets, and 21 per cent stated it should be improving customer service.

Looking at their top IT infrastructure requirements for 2007, there were 29 per cent and 24 per cent of the respondents who identified reducing total IT cost and building a secure IT environment respectively as the key objectives for their organisations going forward. Notably, 17 per cent of APJ respondents reported that "faster deployment of applications" was a key requirement for 2007.

advertisement