IT sector sees hiring process slow to a halt while cloud adoption rises.
Cloud computing uptake among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Europe is set to outstrip IT hires in the next year, according to a forecast released by IT management vendor Spiceworks this week.
Spiceworks carried out a global survey of SME businesses, of which a quarter were based in Europe. The global survey found that SMEs in Europe had a smaller budget than those in other areas such as the US, a factor that affected their IT hardware uptake and recruitment practices.
The bi-annual survey found that the number of European SMEs that were planning to recruit new IT staff in the next year had fallen to just 20 per cent – down from 28 per cent earlier this year.
And hardware purchases were also on the backburner according to the State of SMB report, although they still accounted for 40 per cent of the average SME’s IT spend. A further 34 per cent was found to be allocated for software, while services were up to 26 per cent.
But the report did also find that cloud adoption rates were up among SMEs in just six months, rising from 45 per cent to 53 per cent in the past year alone. Tentative predictions suggest at least 65 per cent of SMEs will turn to the cloud for their offsite back-up and document management solutions over the next year, with web and e-mail hosting being the first services to migrate.
And virtualisation was also found to be on the up, with the number of SMEs using such services rising from 18 per cent to 22 per cent.
"The world’s SMBs continue to increase their investment in new technologies, including tablet devices, smartphones, cloud services and virtualisation," said Spiceworks co-founder Jay Hallberg.
"The results of our research bode well for the industry as new technologies become more pervasive and prompt IT departments to make additional investments."