© Jonathan Nackstrand, AFP
A new report shows that despite the rush to the cloud, hardware is still the top category for Information Technology spending. The report is titled ‘ Hardware Trends in 2022 and Beyond’. The report has been compiled by Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD). The report draws upon global data based on insights from around 1,000 Information Technology professionals, working in companies across North America and Europe.
However, the hardware-centric trend appears to be slowly reversing, based on the survey information. Here it is shown that cloud budgets are increasing from 22 percent of IT budgets in 2020 to 26 percent in 2022 at the expense of hardware spending.
With hardware spending, these accounted for 33 percent of IT budgets in 2020, but for only 30 percent in 2022.
The report suggests a change in the state of server and client computing devices and does so by providing a holistic view of the current and future state of hardware tech. This reveals, for example, that Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor usage is poised to grow: Within two years, business adoption of AMD is expected to rise to 60 percent for personal computing devices and 44 percent for servers.
Another key trend is where storage acceleration trends are continuing. As more than two-thirds (68 percent) of enterprises (of 500 employees or more) plan to adopt all-flash storage arrays within the next two years.
A further sign of the shift away from hardware is found with the cloud “pay-as-you-go” model. This platform is becoming more popular on-premises. For instance, more than half (57 percent) of enterprises expect to adopt consumption-based infrastructure by the end of 2023.
In addition, most (at 54 percent) of business units plan to use speedy non-volatile memory express (NVMe) storage technology in their on-premises servers by the end of 2023.This is new storage access and transport protocol for flash and next-generation solid-state drives (SSDs) that delivers the highest throughput and fastest response times yet for all types of enterprise workloads.
Another signal of the shifting paradigm is with the adoption of advanced reduced instruction set computer machine (ARM) server processors is poised to double from 11 percent of businesses currently to 22 percent within the next two years. These are an enterprise-class computer servers that employ a large array of ARM processors rather than a complement of x86-class processors.
In terms of what these trends are suggesting, the current thrust of technology adoption plans indicates that spending shifts and opportunities are underway as businesses modernize their technology infrastructures in order to prepare for an increasingly hybrid future.
