What's on the Minds of Large Enterprise IT Decision Makers? Part Two

As promised, this is the second installment of my exploration of the extremely worthwhile white paper, A window into large enterprise IT. For those who may have not had a chance to read part one of this series, it is based on a comprehensive survey of top U.S. IT decision-makers conducted by Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), on behalf of Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert).

In this first installment, I covered large enterprise decision makers’ views on: IT as a Strategic Investment, New Technology, The Cloud, and BYOD. This time I’ll examine the equally, if not more important, subjects of Security, Budget and Investment, and Top Concerns and Purchase Drivers. I also includes Alcatel-Lucent’s five recommendations to large enterprises looking to take advantage of these trends.

Views you can use

Given all of the concerns that dominate the headlines on a daily basis, it is not surprising how respondent felt about Security.   

The good news from the chart is that regardless of vertical market or company size, security is being taken very seriously.

On the Budget and Investment front, respondents answered this question: If given 10 percent more funding, what would large enterprise like to like to invest in?  Solutions providers need to spend some time with the following responses: 

• Security (encryption/firewalls/antivirus – 38 percent
• Cloud/File sharing/Backup services – 30 percent
• Applications – 30 percent
• Computers/Tablets/Laptops – 24 percent
• Servers and storage networks – 22 percent
• Internet/Data connectivity services – 21 percent
• Video conferencing/collaboration services – 18 percent
• Wireless services – 17 percent
• Routers/switches – 17 percent
• Telephone services- 9 percent

In short, legacy capabilities have taken a clear back seat to security, the cloud and apps. It should also be noted that the report found strong support in the belief that data analytics is going to help create and sustain competitive advantage. 

I will not spoil the interest in reading through the Top Drivers, except to say that they are very illustrative of what are the top two challenges on large enterprise minds, protecting data and growing revenues.

Finally, when it comes to Recommendations, the report sums them up as follows: “Large enterprises have their own unique needs, requirements and challenges. As technology continues to play an important role, IT departments are going to have to adapt to the changing environment.”

The five recommendations for from Alcatel-Lucent based on the responses are very practical given the mindsets of respondents. To summarize, they are:

1. Large enterprises need to increase their spending on security and executive buy-in is needed so money is properly allocated. 
2. Enterprises with large amounts of personal, customer or employee information are hesitant to move that information to a public or hybrid cloud, so look to them to continue to prefer to manage their own private cloud.
3. Large enterprise need to evaluate new technology not just on cost saving or ROI but as importantly on security and flexibility.
4. Top management needs to be more realistic and not overestimate their enterprise’s technology when compared to the average. 
5. BYOD and its usage remains problematic and is a challenge that will not go away and needs to be addressed as the benefits can be significant if best practices are pursued and enforced.

In introducing the availability of this white paper I noted it is a valuable handy reference.  Hence, by all means us this link to the white paper A window into large enterprise IT to obtain a personal copy.