THEY MAY BE DOWN, but they’re far from out! Workplace servers remain vital despite the embrace of the cloud, and businesses of all sizes will be laying down some Benjamins for them over the next few years, according to new research from IT marketplace Spiceworks. The 2019 State of Servers report also finds that many businesses will be turning to VARs and MSPs for their on-premise servers.
The research shows that 98 percent of businesses currently run on-premises servers. Among organizations of all sizes, 36 percent plan to purchase new server hardware within the next 12 months, and 25 percent plan to do so within the next one to two years. Only 15 percent of organizations have no current plans to buy servers.
Breaking it down by company size, 30 percent of small businesses plan to buy servers within the next 12 months, versus 34 percent of midsize companies and 68 percent of enterprises. And in related research from Spiceworks, servers account for 12 percent of businesses’ hardware budgets for 2019 across all company sizes.
Among respondents who plan to purchase servers, company growth (50 percent) is the top driver, followed by performance degradation (38 percent), maintenance costs of aging hardware (38 percent), and reliability issues (34 percent). In addition, server OS end of life, such as the January 2020 Windows Server 2008 end of service date, is the catalyst for nearly one-third of organizations.
While the research shows that small businesses, which have the smallest IT budgets, are more likely to wait until hardware failure, larger businesses are more likely to purchase new servers on a technology replacement schedule.
Where will they be turning to? Overall, respondents will be tapping their VARs (38 percent), online resellers (26), and MSPs (18 percent); the remaining 48 percent plan to buy servers direct through the manufacturer. Still, that’s a lot of Benjamins to go around.
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