Server issues ruin data centre strategy

IT departments spend more than half their time fire-fighting with server issues, rather than dealing with strategic improvements issues.

This was the claim made by Rackspace today, whose latest research showed IT teams spending 56 per cent of their time on server management and troubleshooting, but only 28 per cent on strategic planning.

What's more, IT departments are burdened by poor decision making. According to the research, 63 per cent of organisations said they had either bought too many servers or not enough.

And the situation appears to be getting worse. A huge 79 percent of respondents said server management was a problem now, compared to the 59 percent who said the same in a 2009 survey.

CIOs are under mounting pressure to support business growth and change, whilst reducing IT spending.

UK departments are slightly better placed than their American counterparts. Whilst 59 per cent of UK companies experienced problems with server management, the number rose to 67 per cent across the Atlantic.

British companies are also spending less time on maintenance too, spending 50 per cent of their time troubleshooting, down from 57 per cent in 2009. However, that still means that IT departments are spending an estimated 912 hours a year just servicing servers.

Despite these conditions, CIOs are under mounting pressure to support business growth and change, whilst reducing IT spending. Some 89 per cent of respondents said they were being exhorted to grow the business and 87 per cent were facing demands to cut costs.

Fabio Torlini, vice president of cloud at Rackspace, said: "Problems associated with having to manage and maintain servers are often readily solved by cloud and managed hosting services."

"In 2009, one-third (33 per cent) of businesses surveyed expected to outsource their in-house servers in the next two to five years. However, over two years later, the new study suggests that many mid-sized businesses are still chained to their servers, and may be spending unnecessary time and money on them."

The research, which was carried out by Vanson Bourne, questioned 50 small and mid-sized businesses from the UK and US.