Sergey Nivens - stock.adobe.com
Mid-market customers evaluating cloud options
Research from MSP Node4 has indicated that users are starting to question their strategy in the face of inflationary pressures and budget limitations
Less than two weeks into the year, it has already become clear that budgets are tightening and economic pressures are impacting many firms.
Aside from the headlines around some of the tech firm job cuts at the likes of Amazon and Salesforce, most of the sense of things worsening has been driven by gut feeling.
Managed service provider Node4 should help change that, with research looking into the IT priorities of mid-market customers.
The channel player’s latest Mid-market IT priorities report 2022/2023 has found that 90% of IT decision-makers are expecting that increased costs of doing business will have an impact on budgets. A third felt that existing funds dedicated to technology spending were not sufficient, underlining the need to do more with less.
The Node4 report also shone a light on the role inflation has played in the cloud space, with rising prices causing many mid-market customers to re-examine their public and private cloud approaches.
The firm looked at four specific verticals – healthcare, transport and logistics, insurance, and online retail – with it clear that the healthcare market had been the keenest to get behind hybrid cloud, with online retail companies the most likely to reduce public cloud spending during 2023.
“Investment in public, private and hybrid cloud – as well as managed and colocation services – was central to facilitating the pivot to remote working during the pandemic,” said Paul Bryce, managing director at Node4. “And those companies that were further along their cloud transformation journey when Covid hit coped better. The same is true this year; those with more mature cloud transformation strategies, such as those that have led the way with hybrid cloud consumption models, may be better placed to cope with the uncertainties surrounding the rising costs of fuel, energy, goods and services.”
Security
Security also remains a major concern, exacerbated by the ongoing shift to hybrid working, which has continued since the start of the pandemic.
“Since publishing our Mid-market IT priorities report last year, the impact of Covid continues to diminish for most businesses,” said Bryce. “Where last year, it was a case of getting remote working up and running quickly – and, in some instances, at almost any cost – the current economic climate has brought value for money, productivity and a push for rapid growth into sharp focus – all without compromising IT security or compliance directives.”
That sense of doing more with less has been seen elsewhere in the channel, and customers are already looking for partners to provide assistance with managing their IT needs and budgetary limitations.
“A lot of mid-market businesses will be trying to drive productivity improvements through the additional tools and services they delivered to enable homeworking during the pandemic,” said Bryce. “This will go some way to ensure that hybrid working doesn’t hamper long-term growth targets or shorter-term productivity – which, given the financial pressures faced by businesses right now, has never been more important.”
