Sharing the results of Servo's research program

Catherine Coale, Head of Business Development & Marketing
Catherine.coale@servo.co.uk 21st February 2005

Why read this article:

	Benchmark your own organisation against our customers' business issues and drivers.
	Learn which IT projects rank in the top 5 priories for 2005 and beyond.
	Download the full research results in PDF format.

Throughout November and December we invited 100 customers to participate in an on-line questionnaire covering 12 topics that included their views on Open Source, the most compelling issues likely to face their business in 2005, and their specific IT project plans.

Our objective was to gain insight into our customers' roadmaps, business drivers and priorities - and to use this information to develop new services and skills.

The majority of responses came from organisations with 250-1000 users, and this article cherry-picks just a few of the results that make an interesting read. The full results are available in PDF format at the bottom of the article.

1.	Desktop Refresh Initiatives. Given the length of time since Y2k refresh projects, the industry may have expected this to be an immediate priority for businesses. However time frames appear to be extending and our customers corroborated this by not predicted refresh projects to become a priority until anything from 6-18 months from now.
2.	Business Continuity. Historically the territory of only large enterprises, Business Continuity emerged as a topical issue for organisations both large and small. It ranked as the third most important issue expected to drive projects in 2005.
3.	IT service levels. Ranking second only to cost reduction, IT service levels has established itself as a serious issue for organisations of all sizes and across all sectors.
4.	Mobile working. 73% of our research participants ranked 'mobility/home working' as either high or medium priority for their business. And "Access for mobile/home workers" ranked in the top 5 IT projects planned for 2005 .
5.	Email & File Archiving. Email archiving ranked in the top 5 priority projects in all categories i.e. 0-6, 6-12, and 12-18 month time frame. And although not an initial priority, File Archiving achieved the number 2 ranking in the 6-12 month time frame, and a number 1 ranking in the 12-18 month time frame. This picture changed slightly for smaller organisations with less than 250 users. Email archiving dropped in priority from 4th to 8th position, and file archiving did not emerge as a pressing issue until the 12-18 month time frame.
6.	Operating System & Email Migration Roadmap. Feedback would indicate that many customers have completed, or are near completing their migration initiatives. The bar chart shows this in more details, but in summary; 51 responders had migration projects planned in the next 0-6 months, this fell to 24 responders in the 6-12 month time frame, and fell again to just 14 responders in the 12-18 month time frame.

Top 5 issues and drivers
We asked customers to chose from a list of issues, and rank those that would be relevant to driving projects in 2005. The highest priorities were evaluated as follows:

1.	Cost reduction	63% / 42 clicks

2.	IT service levels	51% / 34 clicks

3.	Business continuity	49% / 33 clicks

4.	Business process	36% / 24 clicks

-	Audit / Corporate Governance	36% / 24 clicks

5.	Mobile / home working	34% / 23 clicks

Specific IT projects planned
We asked customers to indicate which specific projects they had planned for 2005 and then analysed the changing trend over the next 18 months.

0-6 months:

1.	Server operating system migration	42% / 28 clicks
2.	Email migration	35% / 23 clicks
3.	Storage / backup	33% / 22 clicks
4.	Access for mobile / home workers	33% / 22 clicks
5.	Email archiving	23% / 15 clicks

6-12 months:

1.	Access for mobile/ home workers	27% / 18 clicks
2.	File archiving	26% / 17 clicks
3.	Desktop refresh / deployment	26% / 17 clicks
4.	Email archiving	24% / 16 clicks
5.	Storage / backup	23% / 15 clicks

12-18 months:

1.	File archiving	15% / 10 clicks
2.	Voice over IP	14% / 9 clicks
3.	Email archiving	14% / 9 clicks
4.	Infrastructure LAN/WAN hardware	11% / 7 clicks
5.	VPN evaluation / upgrade	11% / 7 clicks


	Read the detailed results The attached whitepaper reviews all of the detailed results, and outlines Servo's resulting action plan. Click here to download the PDF file.

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