Wed, Oct 14 2009 7:17 jeffl

Industry Statistics: 2000 IT Pro Survey about using Service Providers

Microsoft recently worked with  MarketTools's Zoom Panel Tech to conduct a 2000 IT Pro survey on the subject of how and why they use solution providers (IT consultants, resellers, system integrators and hosted service providers).

Here are the highlights:

Over 70% of IT pros surveyed use some sort of solution provider (consultant, reseller, system integrator or hosted service provider.)
  • Consultants were indicated by IT decision makers as the most commonly used solution provider (57%) vs. resellers (43%), solution integrators (38%), and hosted service providers (36%)
  • 42% of IT decision makers view solution providers as "highly" or "extremely" influential in the direction of their IT systems, versus other outside influences, such as vendors, peers, publications and analysts.
  • About 40% of IT decision makers say their solution providers help them save money (7, 8 or 9 out of 1-9 scale.)
  • "Strategic advice, guidance and overall expertise" (39%) were cited by IT decision makers as the most important value provided by solution providers, over skills such as deployment and implementation (21%) or ongoing support/maintenance (14%)
  • 54% of IT decision makers say "Overall planning, strategy and management" by solution providers provide the greatest value versus specific technical cababilities, such as systems management (38%), storage and disaster recovery (35%), virtualization (34%), security (28%) and others.
  • 47% of IT decision makers want their solution providers to most closely align with MSFT - by far the top vendor preference.
  • Versus IBM (12%), HP (10%), Vmware (9%), Symantec (2%), RedHat (2%), Other (8%)

Jeff Loucks
Available Technology
Available Technology
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