Patching and security updates have eaten the most into IT technicians' time over the last three years, while licencing is responsible for the most expenditure from IT budgets, research by Computing has revealed.
Over 100 IT professionals ranging from IT managers to CIOs were surveyed on the subjects of storage and hardware.
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When asked what required most expenditure from the IT budget over last three years, 34 per cent of respondents listed licensing as the number one cost, as businesses enter into deals with vendors for software ranging from word processing tools to cyber security solutions. The cost of licensing came as a shock to a large number of IT professionals, with 47 per cent listing it as a source of unexpected costs.
Storage expansion was close behind licensing, with 33 per cent of respondents listing it as taking the most out of IT budgets, as firms look to increase the amount of data readily available to them with the expansion of data centres or cloud-based storage equivalents.
Meanwhile, 20 per cent suggested "ensuring high availability" soaked up the most funds over the last three years, while hardware sprawl and patching and security updates followed with seven and six per cent respectively.
When it comes to the amount of time required by IT staff on each of the areas over the last three years, however, the results of the survey were almost opposite to those in the spending survey. While budgeting for patching and security updates wasn't seen as an issue, some 31 per cent of respondents to Computing's survey said updating software takes up the most time, often requiring technicians to work outside of normal office hours.
Storage expansion required the second highest number of hours, according to the Computing survey, with 24 per cent of respondents suggesting this was the case.
Ensuring high availability - in other words, that systems don't go down - tied with hardware sprawl when it comes to the most number of IT technician hours required in the last three years, with each on 20 per cent.
But despite topping the table when it comes to IT expenditure, licensing required the least number of hours work by IT professionals, with just five per cent of survey respondents saying that it required the largest amount of time to deal with.
