Technology upgrades

Austin, Texas-based Spiceworks reports that a majority of small and medium businesses plan to purchase new hardware and software in the next six months.

The company surveyed 1,130 information technology (IT) employees, with the majority of the survey respondents representing technology teams of one to five people that support companies with fewer than 500 employees and with annual technology budgets of $108,000.

Specifically, the survey results indicate that 68% plan to buy new computers — including laptops — and 51% plan to buy new software in the next six months.

“It’s good to see small and medium businesses showing positive signs of growth in technology spending,” Jay Hallberg, co-founder and vice president of marketing for Spiceworks, said in a statement. “Most are clearly ready to buy and it will be interesting to watch how these plans play out among different geographies, industries and company sizes. We will track these and other technology trends of interest in future studies.”

OTHER SURVEY RESULTS
• Small and medium businesses are squeezing an extra year out of their hardware. The average planned lifespan of hardware, which includes desktops, laptops and servers, increased 26% from 40 months to 50 months.

• Among hardware purchasing priorities, 56% plan to buy desktops, 55% plan to purchases laptops, 45% plan new server purchases, 31% plan to add printers, and 27% plan to add new network devices. Only 13% have their eyes on netbooks.

• The average new hardware order is expected to include 13 desktops, 10 laptops and 2 servers

• Hardware remains the biggest IT budget item with small and medium businesses expecting to spend 37% of their annual budgets refreshing and expanding physical infrastructure

• Of the business planning to buy software, 25% are planning backup and recovery purchases within the next six months. Of these, 75% plan to store data on premise, 25% plan to utilize cloud-based storage solutions and 7% is planned to be hosted offsite, and 13 percent on tape and other media.

• Small and medium business IT budgets took a beating in 2009 with 39% cutting 2009 budgets from 2008 levels with the average cut being 22%. Thirty one percent kept budgets the same, and 30% grew their budgets this year by 27%.

• IT hiring among small and medium businesses is poised to grow. While many technology departments are holding staff sizes steady, 22% plan to hire additional full-time or part-time staff, while only 3% plan to further reduce staff over the next six months.