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U.K. businesses waste billions a year on tech investment

According to new research, small businesses in the U.K. habitually waste money on IT products and services they don't need.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

According to new research, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the U.K. habitually waste money on IT products and services they don't need.

IT software provider SolarWinds released a new study today which examines what challenges IT staff face in small and medium businesses this year. Reaching out to 500 firms in the U.K. and Germany, the study found that although IT budgets have remained the same or increased over the last five years in 93 percent of SMEs, over 75 percent of firms are wasting money.

On average, IT employees said that roughly 12 percent of software, once purchased, remained in its box gathering dust. However, in 87 percent of businesses, this figure reached 50 percent. The researchers note that on average, £11,962 is spent on IT management software annually by 4.8 billion U.K. SMEs, and so this can translate into £6.89 billion a year being wasted.

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In addition, although IT spending is important to SMEs -- especially considering the increased adoption of mobile devices and cybersecurity concerns -- budgets are small. One in five are only able to set aside £1500 a year on IT services and products.

"The fact that three quarters of respondents said that a percentage of their IT software is going unused is not surprising to me given that so many vendors are putting out expensive, difficult to install, and hard to use software," said Sanjay Castelino, VP and Market Leader, SolarWinds. "Our mission at SolarWinds has always been to eliminate the complexity found in traditional enterprise software, making it easy to find, buy, deploy and maintain from the day it's downloaded."

Via: The White Board

Image credit: Flickr

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This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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