IT Data Center Priorities: 2022 Survey Results Revealed

A new white paper from Service Express reveals the results of the company’s recent survey of US IT professionals, including their data center priorities.

Get the full report.

There is a continued need for strengthening security, reducing costs, and on-premises data centers, according to a recent survey conducted by Service Express. The 2022 Data Center & Infrastructure Report shares insights learned from a survey of more than 700 IT professionals across the US. The goal of the survey was to understand how IT teams are meeting the challenges presented by the pandemic and global security breaches.

The report highlights three key findings. One of the top data center priorities and challenges identified is the need to strengthen security. “Fending off ransomware attacks is top of mind, and remote work presents potential security risks as employees access internal networks outside of the office.” Reducing costs and workload deployment are also hot topics.

“Moving from on-prem to the cloud quickly provides scalability options for key applications and business activities. However, there are hidden costs if organizations don’t monitor and manage cloud services carefully. You pay for cloud services whether you are using them or not. If services aren’t needed, turn them off.”  – Service Express, “2022 Data Center & Infrastructure Report“

The findings indicate that 57% of respondents plan to initiate data center consolidation over the next year, while 50% will be moving from on-prem to the cloud. Just 8% report that they will move the opposite direction – from the cloud to on-prem. The survey indicates that disaster recovery is a key off-prem driver because “the cloud-based model allows organizations to pay when disaster strikes
versus running the meter 24 hours a day. IT teams see this as a less expensive solution for disaster recovery.”

Price and response time continue to be key infrastructure decision drivers, according to the survey. Service Express CIO Todd Piper is quoted in the report as saying “companies are working to create a healthy balance between OpEx overhead and CapEx costs for new hardware. One of the keys to creating budget for CapEx is to decrease OpEx. Companies can then shift those funds to increasing security, large expenditures or other critical initiatives.”

The report includes data on maintenance challenges, plans for infrastructure upgrades, and the impact of COVID-19 on data center priorities. In the report, the Service Express CIO Todd Piper and CTO Jake Blough provide several key takeaways from the survey’s findings.