The midmarket CIO lives in a unique IT world. Most IT discussions focus on the trials and tribulations of enterprise IT executives that have huge staffs. But more often than not, the midmarket CIO is taking on many of the same challenges facing Fortune 1000 CIOs with staffs that consist of 10 or fewer people.
Hewlett-Packard commissioned Forrester Research to survey 389 IT decision makers worldwide, with 253 of those executives coming from small to medium-sized enterprises. The findings showed remarkably similar interests between midmarket IT leaders and their larger enterprise brethren.
Surprisingly, security issues topped the list of concerns for midsize IT leaders by a wide margin. Not so surprisingly, reducing costs was a high priority. Unfortunately, most of the organizations didn’t seem to be too far past the initial stages of virtualization adoption, while interest in cloud computing is running a lot higher than actual adoption.
Midmarket IT organizations don’t trail large-scale enterprise IT organizations by much when it comes to emerging technologies; they just have to figure out how to take advantage of them without throwing huge amounts of people at the problem.
Be sure to read Mike Vizard’s blog post, “The Changing Dynamics of Midmarket IT,” for more.
Click through to see key findings of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of HP, April 2010
Security dominates in terms of priorities.
Base: 253 IT decision-makers at MSEs
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of HP, April 2010
Most customers are still wrestling with the fundamentals of virtualization.
Base: 253 IT decision-makers at MSEs
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of HP, April 2010
Large-scale enterprises are a little further down the path.
Base: 389 IT decision-makers; 253 at MSEs and 136 at large enterprises
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of HP, April 2010
Backup and storage management top the list.
Base: 389 IT decision-makers; 253 at MSEs and 136 at large enterprises
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of HP, April 2010
Midmarket IT organizations have a bigger need for speed.
Base: 191 IT decision-makers (multiple responses accepted)
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of HP, April 2010
Despite an improving economy, reducing costs is still the order of the day.
Base: 389 IT decision-makers; 253 at MSEs and 136 at large enterprises
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of HP, April 2010
IT executives and the business leaders are increasingly joined at the hip.
Base: 253 IT decision-makers at MSEs (multiple responses accepted)
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of HP, April 2010
