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Infrastructure Management End Users See Budget Constraint as the Greatest Challenge

IDC recently conducted an online survey on investment plans for infrastructure management and storage software in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan). The results of the survey reveal that end users of infrastructure management software are continuing to adopt technology for greater efficiency and effectiveness. Over 63% of respondents see the software as an important investment purchase. These include systems management, network management, and storage software.

"Heterogeneous storage environments resulting from departmental, branch, or post-merger consolidation present challenges to end-users; as such, IDC expects the storage management software investments to be a critical priority moving forward. However, the end-users do meet some challenges," says Ullrich Loeffler, Market Analyst, Software, IDC New Zealand.

Entitled “Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) Investment Plans on Infrastructure Management Software, 2006”, the survey revealed that end-users rated availability, cost optimisation, and need for security and compliance as the top drivers for infrastructure software investments. In terms of challenges, budget constraint was listed at the top with over a third of responses collected. Companies are finding it hard to justify the amount of money required to improve their infrastructure management operations. There were too few business case studies, too few technical experts, and too little management support in these areas.

Investment Plans on System/Network Management Software

Figure 1: Investment Plans on Infrastructure Management Software Survey, 2006 (Source: Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan)

"Virtualisation products, despite its current low adoption rate, seem to be the perfect solution to address most of end-users' challenges while maintaining cost on infrastructure management. IDC expects the investment to move a few notches higher once vendors can elaborate the value propositions effectively in the marketplace, Ullrich further adds.


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