European SMEs Spending $7.6bn on Servers and Networks in 2008
According to a recent survey by AMI-Partners, who take surveys with small to medium-sized business (SMEs) of under 1000 employees, SMEs are expected to spend $7.6bn on servers and networking equipment in 2008 across the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
AMI-Partners say that over half of the $7.6bn will be spent in the UK, Germany and France alone, who are also the main buyers of IT equipment – which is no great surprise considering they have the strongest economies of the lot.
Over the three countries, average spending in 2008 is expected to grow by around 5 percent, with around two thirds of spending coming from businesses with less than 100 employees.
A particularly interesting discovery was that 22 percent of small businesses have only recently bought their first servers, with many getting by using mid-range PCs, until their business needed to expand.
The survey found that across the board, Windows Server 2003 was the most popular operating system, followed by Windows Server 2000. There is good news for Linux, as it was showing the seeds of growth.
Networking hardware costs are expected to rise by 8 percent in 2008. This takes into account the cost of network switches, routers, network interface cards, wireless LAN gear, and cabling. LAN switches are said to account for the bulk of network spending in 2008, the survey said.
Good news for IBM: Of the UK businesses surveyed, over 40 percent of them had bought Blade Servers, which is the highest penetration of Blade Server adoption of all the countries polled.
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