Downturn spells stay of execution for legacy IT

Businesses are putting off technology upgrades as they look to save money during the economic downturn.

As IT budgets are being scaled back, infrastructure upgrades and software-refresh projects are being delayed, according to research by the National Computing Centre (NCC).

Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of businesses surveyed by the NCC's Evaluation Centre said they will be postponing hardware upgrades, with the same proportion saying the same for software.

Almost a third (30 percent) of respondents said they're looking to delay IT-infrastructure upgrades.

Steve Fox, managing director of the NCC Evaluation Centre, said the results of the survey confirm a trend of IT budgets coming under severe pressure, causing projects seen as non-essential or only affecting back-office operations to be viewed as less of a priority. Fox added that businesses are increasingly looking at software as a service (SaaS) and cloud computing as a result.

The research found SaaS is becoming popular, with 30 percent of companies saying they see it as important or very important.

Infrastructure services provided online — or cloud computing — are also stirring interest, with 22 percent of companies regarding such services as important or very important to their future plans.

The survey took in responses from more than 100 companies, across various sectors, with turnover of between £5m and £5bn.