U.K. businesses waste billions a year on tech investment
According to new research, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the U.K. habitually waste money on IT products and services they don’t need.
IT software provider SolarWinds released a new study today which examines what challenges IT staff face in small and medium businesses this year. Reaching out to 500 firms in the U.K. and Germany, the study found that although IT budgets have remained the same or increased over the last five years in 93 percent of SMEs, over 75 percent of firms are wasting money.
On average, IT employees said that roughly 12 percent of software, once purchased, remained in its box gathering dust. However, in 87 percent of businesses, this figure reached 50 percent. The researchers note that on average, £11,962 is spent on IT management software annually by 4.8 billion U.K. SMEs, and so this can translate into £6.89 billion a year being wasted.
See also: Firms push for U.S. corporation tax reform
In addition, although IT spending is important to SMEs — especially considering the increased adoption of mobile devices and cybersecurity concerns — budgets are small. One in five are only able to set aside £1500 a year on IT services and products.
“The fact that three quarters of respondents said that a percentage of their IT software is going unused is not surprising to me given that so many vendors are putting out expensive, difficult to install, and hard to use software,” said Sanjay Castelino, VP and Market Leader, SolarWinds. “Our mission at SolarWinds has always been to eliminate the complexity found in traditional enterprise software, making it easy to find, buy, deploy and maintain from the day it’s downloaded.”
Via: The White Board
Phi Beta Iota: Paul Strassman has been documenting this for decades but no one in the US Government cares to listen to smart people when there is easy money to be made at public expense. No one is held accountable for persistent fraud, waste, and abuse, with IT being a poster child for criminally insane acquisition without so much as a functional requirements document. This is true across society — until intelligence (decision-support) is taught in every school at every level, we will remain impaired.
See Also:
2008: Creating a Smart Nation (Full Text Online for Google Translate)
Journal: Return on Investment Missing from IT World
Search: return of investment for information sys
