Next Generation Data centre Index Cycle III

Following on from previous cycles of research in February and November 2011, a third cycle of the next generation data centre research covering 10 regions shows that improvements are stalling but uncovers some interesting nuances.
March 2013

This third cycle of the next generation data centre (NGD) research, sponsored by Oracle, shows that progress in how organisations are preparing for changes in the way ITC is used to support their businesses has stalled for many organisations. However, detailed analysis shows how those who are investing in certain areas and just changing the mind-set of how they approach ITC are well ahead of those who are just trying to save money.

Clive Longbottom Quocirca Ltd Tel : +44 118 948 3360 Email: Clive.Longbottom@Quocirca.com

Bob Tarzey Quocirca Ltd Tel: +44 1753 855794 Email: Bob.Tarzey@Quocirca.com

Copyright Quocirca 2013

Next Generation Data centre Index Cycle III

Next Generation Data centre Index Cycle III

Following on from previous cycles of research in February and November 2011, a third cycle of the next generation data centre research covering 10 regions shows that improvements are stalling but uncovers some interesting nuances. Overall, improvements in Index scores are muted Flexibility is up slightly, supportability is flat, but sustainability is up IT/business alignment is a core aspect
Improvements between Cycle II and Cycle III show little movement at the overall NGD Index level. Budgetary constraints continue to bite and minimise the capacity for organisations to make any major investments in their IT and data centre. In many cases, this could be storing up issues, leaving the business in a poor position when better times do come through or even putting the business in a position of fighting for survival due to inadequate IT capabilities. With the sub-index scores, supportability has fallen back ever so slightly (flat within the statistical accuracy of the research). Flexibility has improved somewhat, but sustainability has grown the most. It is unlikely that this is down to any desire to be strategically carbon neutral. It is far more likely to reflect the need to gain greater control over energy usage and costs and to avoid carbon taxes put in place by governments.

Organisations that have poor alignment between the business and IT score badly in the index on average, those with no alignment score half as well as those where IT and the business work hand-in-hand. Getting the business and IT to work together requires no capital outlay and little operating cost. IT needs to be able to talk the business language and respond to requirements in a meaningful manner, but the results are clear: those who are willing to make the change will find themselves better positioned as to the flexibility of their IT platform in supporting the business needs. Those organisations that have little or no tooling in place to monitor, measure and report on what is happening on their IT platforms again score around half as well as those who have the requisite tooling in place. Only through being able to measure what has happened and what is happening can real visibility be gained on what is likely to happen and so be able to advise the business accordingly. Having the right tools in place can pay for itself very rapidly, and will continue to provide direct financial benefits for IT and the business. At first glance, it looks as if there has been a move away from using external data centre facilities. However, multiple aspects of the timing of the research such as the second cycle being carried out when there was considerable activity in running proof of concept (PoC) projects on cloud, plans in the third cycle for moving back in-house due to perceived performance and data security issues as well as the emergence of software as a service (SaaS) will all have had an impact on the measurements of the results here.

Tooling is another core requirement

Although it appears that organisations are pulling back from the use of external data centres, other aspects have to be considered
Conclusions

Financial reality appears to have hit home, with organisations realising that the current economic climate is going to be here with us for some time. The inertia of IT budgets now means that the third cycle of research has been carried out after the initial knee-jerk reaction, but before longer-term strategic budgeting is likely to have come to the fore. The greater findings from the research are hidden within the detail and it is here where we see the problems beginning to build for organisations as IT investments are left on the back burner and existing platforms and facilities become less capable of supporting the business.

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Background
Virtualisation is now a mainstream technology. Cloud computing is passing from proof of concept (PoC) projects into being used for run-time workloads in private, public and hybrid clouds. Bring your own device (BYOD) is happening whether organisations like it or not and is resulting in further consumerisation of IT through the emergence of bring your own software (BYOS) as employees download interesting applications from the various app stores available on their new devices. Big data is creeping onto the scene, further stressing how IT departments have to look at supporting the changing needs of the business. However, with the technical world changing so rapidly, the global economic climate continues to be bad. Several countries have gone through double-dip recessions and few organisations are looking to increase spending markedly through 2013. This raises the issues of how can the IT function make sure that it provides a flexible technical support platform for the business when the cry from on high is do more with less? The first Cycle of this research, carried out in early 2011, coincided with recessionary pressures on a worldwide basis outside of the high-growth BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies. The second Cycle of research, carried out in November 2011, coincided with organisations realising that the economic climate was not improving and so having to make deeper cuts in overall spending. The third Cycle, carried out in October 2012, coincided with continuing problems in the Eurozone, uncertainty in the banking sector leading to less lending taking place and organisations having to come to terms with the realisation that lower expenditure was now going to have to be strategic for the foreseeable future, rather than just a tactical move to get them through the tough times. Note that due to changing the core countries covered, the figures presented throughout this report will not necessarily agree with those shown in the equivalent report covering the first Cycle research (http://quocirca.com/reports/593/). However, they will compare with the findings shown in the second report (http://quocirca.com/reports/654/), as these were all normalised to cover the core regions. Where analysis brings out points worth covering, details on Ireland and Russia (the two countries added as of Cycle II) will be covered in this report.

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Research methodology
The research was conducted using Quocircas standard methodology. A total of 952 interviews were carried out during October 2012. All interviews were carried out via telephone to reduce the skew associated with open web-based research, where respondents tend to be from the two extremes of agreeing or disagreeing with the subject and to keep with the approach utilised in Cycles I and II of the research. Respondent profiles were chosen from a range of commercially available databases and were checked as part of the interview process to ensure that the respondent fell within the agreed profile. Where English is not spoken widely, all interviews were carried out in native language to avoid any issues with misunderstanding the questions. All results were quality checked to assure that no skew had been introduced by specific interviewing agents, that no responses were predominantly completed along an average score, and that all responses made sense within the context of the individual and organisation concerned. The results of the research were analysed at an aggregate level and also by region, by vertical and by size of business. Cross correlations were also carried out to see how well responses tallied against each other. The regions covered were: UK 100 interviews Belgium/Netherlands (Benelux) 100 interviews (50/50) Germany/Switzerland (DCH) 100 interviews (70/30) France 100 interviews Spain/Portugal (Iberia) 100 interviews (70/30) Italy 100 interviews Saudi Arabia/UAE (Middle East) 100 interviews (50/50) Denmark/Finland/Norway/Sweden (Nordics) 100 interviews (25/25/25/25) Russia 102 interviews Ireland 50 interviews

Note that the USA was dropped from the second Cycle of the research, and Russia and Ireland were added. In order to maintain fidelity in the index, top-level scores throughout this report will compare the 8 common regions where comparisons are drawn, but will include details from Ireland and Russia as appropriate. The vertical mix for interviews was as follows: Financial Services 146 interviews Healthcare 144 interviews Media 144 interviews Public Sector 148 interviews Retail 141 interviews Telco 87 interviews Utilities 127 interviews Other 15 interviews

By size, the interviews were as follows: Tier 1 (>$1b revenues) 483 interviews Tier 2 ($100m - $1b revenues) 469 interviews

The research was organised in four sections. The first three of these sections were aimed at creating a set of measurements to form a baseline against which organisations can be positioned. By using a scoring system for each

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question asked or statement provided to an interviewee to match against, a score between 0 and 10 could be calculated. By averaging these scores out, the series of sub-indices could be created at a per-respondent level, and these could then be averaged out to provide overall sub-index scores. These three areas, each of which results with a sub-index score, are: Data centre flexibility how well is the existing data centre monitored, measured and controlled, and how easy is it to introduce new equipment, new technical architectures and new workloads into the existing data centre environment? Data centre sustainability how efficient and effective is the existing data centre environment, and how core does the business view the sustainability of its technical environment? Data centre supportability Looking at how well the existing data centre facility provides support to the organisation through availability, being able to plan for future workloads and how well it is aligned with the organisations strategy.

From these three sub-indices, an overall score for each respondents next generation data centre (NGD) index was calculated. The fourth section of the interview was changed in this cycle of the research. Whereas Cycles I and II looked at cloud computing, this time the section covered views on big data. These results have not been used within the main NGD index calculation. These results do provide interesting and valuable information on organisations understanding and thoughts on big data across a broad range of respondents, and will be presented in a separate Quocirca report.

Overall Index findings

Overall, the main Index improved from a score of 5.58 to 5.64. This compared to a score from Cycle I of 5.21. As can be seen, between Cycles I and II there was an improvement of 7.1%, but only a 1.1% improvement between Cycles II and II. Underlying these figures are the changes in the sub-indices (see Figure 1). The sustainability sub-index improved between Cycle II and III from 5.64 to 5.79; the flexibility sub-index improved from 5.46 to 5.53; but the supportability sub-index fell from 5.64 to 5.62. The large improvements that were seen between February and November 2011 have not been replicated between November 2011 and October 2012. In Quocircas view, the rise in the sustainability sub -index score is unlikely to be around any strategic investments from organisations to improve their standing as good citizens when it comes to carbon footprint. What it is far more likely to represent is investment in ways to lower energy usage to try and gain control over an unpredictable but inexorably rising variable cost, combined in certain geographies with the need to minimise government taxes being levied on the carbon output of large organisations. The lack of improvement in other areas is likely to be financial inertia. In February 2011, although the banking crisis that started in 2008 was in full swing, corporate budgets were still relatively unscathed. Large projects, such as desktop refreshes and server upgrades had been put on hold, but IT investment for new projects deemed to be critical to an organisations success were still being funded. This carried IT departments through to the end of 2011, when the longer-term nature of the financial situation was apparent to all, and corporate budgets were being squeezed. IT departments found that even critical projects were now having to be more firmly supported, and many such projects were added to the pile of work to be done when the situation improved. This progression is shown in Figure 2. Here, the reasons for any planned investments in data centres are shown. Across all three Cycles, the need for consolidation is the biggest reason, showing how virtualisation is impacting the amount

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of IT equipment an organisation is having to manage under its own auspices, as well as the impact of sourcing functions from external cloud platforms.

Index average
Data centre supportability Data centre sustainability Data centre flexibility 4.8 Cycle III
Figure 1: Overall index scores

5 Cycle II

5.2

5.4 Cycle I

5.6

5.8

Move to new technical architecture Replace facilities on a rolling basis Age of existing facilities Need to support business growth Need for consolidation Limitations of existing facilities We have no new data centre investments planned

0 Cycle III
Figure 2: Reasons for data centre investments

100

200

300

400

Cycle II

Cycle I

In Cycle I, the second highest priority was to support business growth whereas in Cycles II and III, this drops dramatically as financial inertia begins to catch up and organisations move more toward a survival strategy, rather than a growth one.

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Cycle I also showed that the need to move to a new technical architecture was a driver for change again, this has dropped in Cycles II and III. However, Quocirca does not believe that this is due to a lack of investment, but reflects the fact that many organisations have now implemented a higher degree of virtualisation in their data centres and so do not see the need as yet for further changes to the platform that would require significant investment in the data centre itself. However, organisations are waking up to the fact that older-style data centres may not provide the core capabilities that will be required in the future to support the business. The limitations and age of existing facilities have grown as reasons for data centre investment from Cycle I. The growing awareness of the impact of virtualisation, cloud and new network topologies, such as fabric networking and software defined networks (SDN), are having an impact on how IT and facilities management see the future of the data centre. The biggest growth, however, has been in those who have no new data centre investments planned. There are two aspects to this between the Cycles, those who were planning investments will have made those investments and will now regard themselves as being in a position where extra investments are for a longer term in the future. However, there are also those who would like to invest more in the data centre but cannot, due to limitations on spend caused by the economic climate. In Quocircas view, the latter will outweigh the former, and organisations will suffer as their IT platforms become more and more of a constraint on the flexibility of the business.

Other analysis
As there has been little overall change between the sub-index and main index scores between Cycle II and Cycle III, this report will concentrate on some of the interesting correlations that have been identified while analysing the research findings. Firstly, the three Cycles of research have shown that there has been a continuing gap between the business and the IT function (see Figure 3). There has been a slight improvement over the three Cycles, but it is still the case that nearly 12% of organisations see the IT function essentially as a supplier, with no linkage between the organisation and IT. A further 29% only involve IT when the business decision has been made. This command and control model means that IT has little input into the business decisions, and will always be on the back foot when it comes to helping the business. The major impact of this gap between the business and the IT function is shown in Figure 4. Those where IT is not involved at all in the business score, on average, 50% of the index score for those where the business and IT work very closely together. Quocirca advises that this should also be a warning for those looking to outsourcing their IT functions. It may be OK to outsource the grunt work of carrying out updates, patches and general maintenance, but the strategy of IT has to remain a corporate issue in order to gain the required technical support for the business needs. The interesting result here is that this is not something that requires any major financial investment. This lack of involvement of IT within the business decision-making process is far more of a mind-set issue and this can be addressed through the business and IT working more closely together. Results will not be immediate, as both sides will have to moderate their approaches somewhat, but by aligning the direction of the technical platform with the business needs, a far more strategic direction will be taken, and positive results will become apparent over time and will continue to give value through better flexibility and response to the dynamic needs of the business.

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The organisation has full, dynamic visibility of how IT supports the business through full business dashboards The organisation receives regular reports on what IT is doing to support the organisations priorities The organisation and IT work closely together to create common plans for how IT will support the organisation The organisation dictates its needs to IT and we respond as best we can

There is little alignment between the organisation and

IT

0% Cycle III

5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% Cycle I

Cycle II

Figure 3: How much alignment is there between the organisation and IT?

The organisation has full, dynamic visibility of how IT supports the business through full business dashboards The organisation receives regular reports on what

IT is doing to support the organisations priorities

The organisation and IT work closely together to create common plans for how IT will support the organisation The organisation dictates its needs to IT and we respond as best we can There is little alignment between the organisation and IT

Figure 4: Correlation between business/IT alignment and overall index scores

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At a technical level, the research shows similar correlations. Those organisations that do not have the capability to monitor, measure and predict their needs struggle against those who have such tools in place.

We use advanced analytics based on a mix of historical usage patterns and stated future business plans to predict future states

We use straight line predications based on

historical usage

We try to second guess and get it right more often than not

We try to second guess, but often get it wrong

Very little we will deal with things as they come along

0% Cycle III Cycle II

10%

20%

30%

40%

Cycle I

Figure 5: Usage of tools to be able to predict future workload requirements

Figure 5 shows that there has been some improvement across the three Cycles but not as much as would be hoped for. The majority (55%) are still basing their future workload predictions on guesstimates a poor way to try and support an organisation, particularly in bad economic times when the business really needs to be in a position to try out new things quickly and often to see if they work and, if not, be able to dispose of the workload (and free up its dependent hardware, operating systems, application platforms and so on) as rapidly as possible. Again, the correlation between those who have a greater capability to accurately predict future requirements and those who rely on guessing is stark (see Figure 6). Again, those with little capability score close to half the scores of those who have the tooling in place to be able to predict their needs.

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We use advanced analytics based on a mix of historical usage patterns and stated future business plans to predict future states We use straight line predications based on historical usage We try to second guess and get it right more often than not We try to second guess, but often get it wrong Very little we will deal with things as they come along

Figure 6: Correlation between capability to predict future workload needs and overall index scores

The lack of tooling (reflected here and in responses to similar questions on the visibility of existing workloads within the business and how organisations respond to issues in the IT environment) leads to other problems. A large proportion of an organisations IT budget is used up in purely keeping the lights on dealing with the basic tasks of updating and patching applications, installing software and dealing with change requests and help desk calls. Quocircas previous research showed that this could be as much as 80% for organisations where IT and the business were not well aligned or as low as 30% for organisations where IT and the business worked hand-in-hand. This has major opportunities for an organisation. Imagine a 10m IT budget, and that 80% of this is going to keeping the lights on - 8m Euros is being spent on activities that are not business-related. By investing in tools that can automate issue resolution, patches and updates and provide self service capabilities to users, this could be moved to being, say, 60% - just 6m. 2m has been freed up this should be more than enough to have paid for the tools required, provides a better platform where an NGD score should be higher, and provides money for more targeted IT investment and for the organisation to apply against its bottom line. This is just one example of where a small up-front investment can pay for itself very rapidly and provide on-going savings along with a more flexible and dynamic technology platform for the business itself.

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Geographic findings
At a high level, the index findings were pretty much as in Cycle II (see Figure 7). The Nordics lead the way, closely followed by Germany/Switzerland (DCH), with the UK having improved more between Cycle II and Cycle III than these two regions. At the bottom, Italy, Iberia and Russia trail along badly, with Iberia and Benelux being two regions where the overall index scores dropped between the two latest Cycles. One aspect here is the relative performance between the EU countries inside and outside of the Euro. At a country level, the Euro countries of Belgium, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain all had overall index scores that dropped. France improved very slightly, and Portugal and Italy had less than a 0.1 point increase between the two Cycles. Conversely, those EU countries outside of the Euro (Sweden, Denmark, the UK) all improved by between 0.2 and 0.4 points. Outside of the EU, Norway, Russia and the UAE improved appreciably, while Saudi Arabia and Switzerland dropped slightly. It would seem that the global economic climate, when combined with the continuing troubles of the Euro, are making organisations within the Eurozone very wary of increasing spend in any area. The only country that bucks the trend is Ireland its score improved from a Cycle II index of 4.79 to a Cycle III score of 5.59 by far and away the biggest improvement in the research. Quocirca believes that this is because Ireland has taken solid steps in trying to deal with its financial problems, and has managed to build a better base platform for growth than is currently being seen in the Mediterranean countries, which is having knock-on effects on the likes of Germany.

Nordics DCH UK Benelux Ireland Middle East France Italy Iberia Russia 0 2 4 6 8 Cycle III Cycle II Cycle I

Figure 7: Regional Index scores (Note that Ireland and Russia were not included in Cycle I)

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Next Generation Data centre Index Cycle III

Vertical findings
As with the geographic findings, there has been little change between Cycle II and Cycle III (see Figure 8). Those verticals that run large technical infrastructures Telcos and Utility companies come out top, with high scores throughout the research in areas such as adoption of virtualisation and tooling to monitor, manage and report on workloads. Mass retail continues to suffer from low margins and a lack of investment, while the public sector is blowing with the prevailing political winds, which at the moment are blowing from the austerity direction, minimising the chances of effective IT platforms being invested in here.

Telco Utilities Financial Services Healthcare Media Retail Public Sector 0 1 Cycle III
Figure 8: Index scores by vertical

3 Cycle II

4 Cycle I

Out of all the verticals covered, few made any great strides forward between Cycle II and Cycle III of the research. Utilities grew from a strong position, with Healthcare growing from a middling position and Retail from a low position. Others essentially stood still or fell back slightly.

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Next Generation Data centre Index Cycle III

The data centre bounce

One finding from the research was that, from Cycle I to Cycle II, there had been a move to the greater use of external data centre facilities. However, in Cycle III, this trend seemed to have reversed (see Figure 9). Between Cycle I and Cycle II, Quocirca expected to see a degree of rationalisation of data centre usage as co-location and cloud usage came into the mix. However, at first appearance, it then looks as if between Cycle II and Cycle III organisations have pulled back from this move to external data centres and are bringing these facilities back in-house.

Single in-house Several in-house only Mix - one in-house plus external Mix - several in-house plus external 0% Cycle 3
Figure 9: Data centre mix

10%

20% Cycle 1

30%

40%

50%

Cycle 2

Although there will undoubtedly be some cases of this where a move to an external facility has not gone well, it is unlikely that this has been the case on a more widespread basis. For others, proof of concept (PoC) cloud projects would have been carried out via external providers, such as Amazon Web Services. Once the PoC had completed and deemed to be a success, the decision would have to be made as to whether the service would continue to be run outside the organisation, or brought back in-house. For some, performance may not have met expectations; for others, governance, risk and compliance (GRC) needs may have dictated a need to bring the data back in-house. Yet others may have found that the contractual details of moving from a PoC to a full run time environment meant that pulling things back into the private data centre reduced operational or corporate risk. Yet others may well have planned to place the run time environment on a private cloud anyway, but that the ready availability of third-party cloud platforms meant that testing could be done far more effectively on these platforms while the internal cloud was being put in place. The other aspect that will impact the dynamic of data centre reporting is in the greater adoption of software as a service (SaaS). In February 2011 (the timing for the first Cycle of research), there were a few major SaaS players around, but most large organisations were still looking at continued use of on-premise applications. By November 2011 (the timing for the second Cycle of the research), cloud was being tried out through the use of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), with the control of the applications still being in the hands of the IT department. In these cases, the data centre facility was still something that had to be taken into account by IT they still had to understand how the infrastructure or platform they were using worked. Therefore, I/PaaS would be presented back in the research as an external data centre facility.

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Next Generation Data centre Index Cycle III

However, in the past year, even the major software vendors have started to make moves to a SaaS model as it has become more acceptable to organisations of all sizes. SaaS is a pure provisioning model the SaaS provider has the responsibility for nearly all aspects of the technology, with IT becoming the mediator between the users and the SaaS service. In this case, the place where the service comes from is unlikely to be seen as being a data centre facility. Therefore, this perceived bounce of data centre usage is not what it may first seem to be organisations are likely to be using a lot of external data centres, but as they have no responsibility for any aspect of the facility or its technology, they do not report them into the research.

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Conclusions
Although the increase in the overall NGD index score was modest over the period between Cycle II and Cycle III of the research, this is to be expected. The economic climate is not conducive for organisations to make large investments in new IT equipment and data centre facilities, and this is reflected in the plateauing in the index scores. However, the rising and variable cost of energy is still attracting attention from organisations, and this is reflected in the growth in the sustainability sub-index. It is in the detail where the main findings are for this research there has been a change from seeing supporting business growth as a driver for change in the data centre to one where the existing data centre is seen as being unfit for the future, as the true impacts of virtualisation and cloud are seen in areas such as power distribution, equipment cooling and backup power supplies. There are also marked correlations between how IT is viewed by the business and how well IT supports the business and how well prepared the IT department is to monitor, measure and report on technical workloads and therefore predict future needs. Whereas the second of these areas requires investment in tools and in the infrastructure to run the tools, the first requires nothing more than IT and the business ensuring that both parties are involved in decisionmaking. For IT, this may mean changing the way they talk, moving from the use of technical jargon to a higher level of business-speak, couching requests for IT investment in terms of providing new revenue opportunities, less customer churn, lowering corporate risk or even (for example, in the case of investing in virtualisation) cost savings in energy usage and better management of the carbon footprint of the organisation to meet both legal (possibly taxable) requirements and also the organisations corporate social responsibility (CSR) statements. The poorer performance of the Eurozone countries has to raise flags for the economic bloc. Lack of solid action around the Euro, with the likes of Greece stumbling from one political impasse to another, with Italy being split with a large number voting against austerity and little being done in other countries to try and gain any level of control over their debt levels, means that all countries in the Eurozone are being impacted. Even the powerhouse of Germany has stalled when it comes to data centre investments, while those remaining outside of the Eurozone are, on the whole, showing improvements in their index scores. With talk of triple-dip recessions, continuing discord in the Euro and an aversion from organisations to take too much risk, it is unlikely that there will be much change in the investment into new data centre facilities those who realise that an existing facility has reached the end of its life may be forced into change; those who accept that investments are needed just to provide support for the very survival of the business will also invest. However, those who perceive their data centre facilities as good enough will continue to spend large amounts of money in keeping the lights on sub-optimally carrying out base-level tasks such as patching and upgrading and running at low CPU, storage and network utilisation levels, and will see themselves at a disadvantage against those who have tried to use consolidation and automation to free up some of this money in order to fund more advanced IT investments. With the technical world undergoing a major change involving the use of internal and external data centres, onpremise software and software as a service (SaaS), organisations need to be able to review their positions and plan strategically tactical cost savings and just battening down the hatches will not help get through a prolonged economic downturn, nor put the organisation in a good position to respond to a more dynamic market when better times return. If nothing else, investing in a more flexible data centre will help to provide resilience in dealing with the on-going problems in the markets and provide a safety net if things get even worse.

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About Oracle
With more than 390,000 customers - including 100 of the Fortune 100 - and with deployments across a wide variety of industries in more than 145 countries around the globe, Oracle offers an optimised and fully integrated stack of business hardware and software systems. Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in the data centre - from servers and storage, to database and middleware, through applications. Oracle systems: Provide better performance, reliability, security, and flexibility Lower the cost and complexity of IT implementation and management Deliver greater productivity, agility, and better business intelligence For customers needing modular solutions, Oracle's open architecture and multiple operating-system options also give customers unmatched benefits from best-of-breed products in every layer of the stack, allowing them to build the best infrastructure for their enterprise.

Next Generation Data centre Index Cycle III

REPORT NOTE: This report has been written independently by Quocirca Ltd to provide an overview of the issues facing organisations seeking to maximise the effectiveness of todays dynamic workforce. The report draws on Quocircas extensive knowledge of the technology and business arenas, and provides advice on the approach that organisations should take to create a more effective and efficient environment for future growth.

About Quocirca
Quocirca is a primary research and analysis company specialising in the business impact of information technology and communications (ITC). With world-wide, native language reach, Quocirca provides in-depth insights into the views of buyers and influencers in large, mid-sized and small organisations. Its analyst team is made up of real-world practitioners with first-hand experience of ITC delivery who continuously research and track the industry and its real usage in the markets. Through researching perceptions, Quocirca uncovers the real hurdles to technology adoption the personal and political aspects of an organisations environment and the pressures of the need for demonstrable business value in any implementation. This capability to uncover and report back on the end-user perceptions in the market enables Quocirca to provide advice on the realities of technology adoption, not the promises. Quocirca research is always pragmatic, business orientated and conducted in the context of the bigger picture. ITC has the ability to transform businesses and the processes that drive them, but often fails to do so. Quocircas mission is to help organisations improve their success rate in process enablement through better levels of understanding and the adoption of the correct technologies at the correct time.

Quocirca has a pro-active primary research programme, regularly surveying users, purchasers and resellers of ITC products and services on emerging, evolving and maturing technologies. Over time, Quocirca has built a picture of long term investment trends, providing invaluable information for the whole of the ITC community. Quocirca works with global and local providers of ITC products and services to help them deliver on the promise that ITC holds for business. Quocircas clients include Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, O2, T-Mobile, HP, Xerox, EMC, Symantec and Cisco, along with other large and medium-sized vendors, service providers and more specialist firms. Details of Quocircas work and the services it offers can be found at http://www.quocirca.com Disclaimer: This report has been written independently by Quocirca Ltd. During the preparation of this report, Quocirca has used a number of sources for the information and views provided. Although Quocirca has attempted wherever possible to validate the information received, Quocirca cannot be held responsible for any errors in information received in this manner. Although Quocirca has taken what steps it can to ensure that the information provided in this report is true and reflects real market conditions, Quocirca cannot take any responsibility for the ultimate reliability of the details presented. Therefore, Quocirca expressly disclaims all warranties and claims as to the validity of the data presented here, including any and all consequential losses incurred by any organisation or individual taking any action based on such data and advice. All brand and product names are recognised and acknowledged as trademarks or service marks of their respective holders.