The State Of European SMB IT Hardware And Infrastructure: 2006

European small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) will spend 34% of their overall IT budgets on hardware in 2007. The largest share of this hardware budget will go to PCs and servers. New server purchases in the next 12 months will be driven by the need to replace old hardware and create new application implementations. Thirty-seven percent of medium businesses are prioritizing the reduction of the number of server operating system varieties and server hardware configurations. Seventy-five percent of small businesses only have Microsoft server operating systems. The number of SBs planning to buy new storage is four percentage points higher than last year. User file and email archiving is driving storage purchases. Network firewalls and intrusion detection will be the most-wanted security technologies. Seventy-two percent of SMBs rely on their internal IT staff for infrastructure management services.