Security Fears and Inadequate Infrastructure Investments Shake IT Confidence, According to New Intermedia Report

Intermedia releases its inaugural IT Confidence Index

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Dec 13, 2016, 08:00 ET

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Intermedia, a leading cloud business applications provider, today released the results of its inaugural IT Confidence Index, pinpointing the biggest challenges across IT functions. Revealing a modest overall Confidence Score of 7.2 out of 10, IT decision makers (ITDMs) expressed concerns about the resources available and allotted to them for addressing cybersecurity threats and meeting current and future business demands.

Michael Gold, CEO of Intermedia, said: "Consistently, IT professionals at smaller companies measured as less confident than larger ones, expressing concerns about their ability to protect and support their organizations. This uncertainty presents MSPs with a real opportunity to help SMBs that don't have the resources to run IT on their own."

The Index surveyed 350 ITDMs, statistically measuring IT confidence levels on a 10-point scale (where zero represents "not confident at all" and 10 represents "extremely confident"). Questions spanned across four topic categories – Security, General IT Services, Infrastructure and Skilled IT Workforce.

Jonathan Levine, CTO at Intermedia, said: "Given the critical role IT plays in underpinning business today, a Confidence Score of 7.2 is worrisome. You wouldn't feel comfortable boarding an airplane if the pilot had a 7.2 confidence level in the plane's airworthiness. This modest confidence suggests that organizations may be more exposed than leaders realize. We'll be watching closely to see if further cloud adoption helps improve confidence, or if the insufficient attention given to IT concerns today will further erode confidence in the coming year."

Index finds that small companies are struggling the most
Across all four categories, the Index revealed a stark contrast in overall confidence levels with small companies with fewer than 50 employees (Confidence Score of 5.9) versus medium to large companies, which had higher Confidence Scores (8.7 and 8.9, respectively). As company size and cloud adoption increased, so did confidence levels.

Michael Gold, CEO of Intermedia, said: "Consistently, IT professionals at smaller companies measured as less confident than larger ones, expressing concerns about their ability to protect and support their organizations. This uncertainty presents MSPs with a real opportunity to help SMBs that don't have the resources to run IT on their own."

Other highlights include:

Cyber threats take a toll on confidence: Relative to the Security category, ITDMs were the least confident in their organization's ability to prevent, withstand or stop ransomware, botnets and DDoS Attacks.
Cloud applications have overtaken on-premises applications: On average, 56 percent of internal IT applications currently run in the cloud. Thirty-seven percent of ITDMs expected to increase this number over the next six months.
IT investments are inadequate for current and future business needs: Relative to infrastructure¹ spending, ITDMs gave an IT Confidence Score of 6.5 – the lowest of all categories tracked – indicating that companies may not be investing enough.
MSPs and VARs need to adapt: Thirty-three percent of ITDMs felt that IT consultants were too hardware focused, and 24 percent felt that IT consultants weren't putting enough emphasis on cloud solutions, demonstrating that MSPs and VARs have a long way to go in their cloud transitions to catch up to the market.

To download the report and view complete results from the 2016 IT Confidence Index, please visit: Intermedia.net/ITConfidence2016.

Methodology
The IT Confidence Index, which surveyed 350 IT decision makers in the U.S., was conducted by Precision Sample and commissioned by Intermedia. The IT Confidence Index is the average of IT Confidence Scores from four topic areas: General IT Services, Security, Infrastructure and Skilled IT Workforce. Each score was calculated using a 10-point question scale, which asks respondents to rate their level of confidence between "not confident at all" and "extremely confident."

About Intermedia
Intermedia is a one-stop shop for cloud business applications. Its Office in the Cloud™ suite integrates the essential IT applications that companies need, including email, voice, file backup and sharing, conferencing, instant messaging, identity and access management, mobility, security and archiving – all delivered by a single provider – and integrated into one control panel. Intermedia services offer enterprise-grade security, a 99.999 percent uptime service level agreement and award-winning 24/7 support, as certified by TSIA and J.D. Power.

Intermedia's over 700 employees serve over 1,000,000 users across more than 75,000 businesses and 6,000 active partners, including VARs, MSPs, key distributors and telecoms. Its Partner Program lets partners sell under their own brand with control over billing, pricing and other elements of their customer relationships. Intermedia is the world's largest independent provider of Exchange email in the cloud and one of the leading cloud voice providers. For more information, visit Intermedia.net.