technologyreseller.co.uk 07 NEWS of UK respondents resetting a password at least once a month (and 13% as often as once a week), the appeal of biometrics has never been greater. When given the option of biometrics or a password, 42% of UK respondents say they will always choose biometrics. There is also growing acceptance of electronic IDs (eIDs). Two thirds (66%) of UK respondents say they would use a digital form of governmentissued ID if one were available, with 55% citing convenience as the reason why. www.entrust.com/cybersecurityinstitute/reports/future-of-identity ······ Half of firms bust public cloud storage budgets Over half (52%) of organisations in EMEA exceeded their public cloud storage budgets in 2022, according to Wasabi Technologies’ 2023 EMEA Cloud Storage Index. The top reasons for exceeding budget include higher than anticipated storage usage (39%); higher than forecast data operations fees (37%); the migration of additional applications to the cloud (37%); hikes in storage list prices (37%); and higher than expected data retrieval (35%), API calls (31%), egress (26%) and data deletion fees (26%). Almost half (48%) of organisations’ cloud storage budget is allocated to fees, with 51% allocated to storage capacity. Overall, 87% of EMEA respondents migrated storage from on-premises to the public cloud in 2022. The top three reasons for doing so were infrastructure resilience (43%), avoiding the cost of refreshing old/purchasing new hardware (40%) and having to scale resources (38%). More than four out of five organisations expect to increase both the amount of data they store in the cloud in 2023 (83%) and their cloud storage budgets (81%). Even so, there are still concerns around storage, including a lack of cloud platform experience/insufficient training; unauthorised access or insight into one’s data; a lack of storage identity and access management policies/tools; and a lack of native backup, DR and data protection tools. On average, organisations in EMEA allocate 14% of their total IT budget to cloud storage. Consolidation of technology, cost savings and better customer support are top priorities for 2023 GoTo, the IT management, support and business communication specialist, has published the main findings from its IT Priorities: 2023 Report. The report, conducted by Frost & Sullivan and commissioned by GoTo, looks at global trends among 1,000 IT decision-makers at companies with fewer than 1,000 employees. Against a background of economic uncertainty, scrutinised budgets and overburdened resources, IT decision-makers are having to set goals and objectives to maximise their investment, grow their business and streamline their processes. Among respondents to GoTo’s survey the four main business objectives are to: n grow revenue; n improve operational efficiency; n reduce costs; and n increase customer satisfaction. The IT Priorities: 2023 Report identifies a number of key trends that will allow teams to achieve these objectives: n Consolidation for enhanced productivity and cost savings. Eight out of 10 respondents (83%) consider consolidation of communication, collaboration and IT management and support tools an important initiative for the year; 93% have completed, planned or are already undertaking these consolidation efforts. The top reasons given for consolidation are to increase employee productivity, to give the IT team solutions that are easier to manage and to make cost savings, with 41% saying they plan to switch vendors to reduce costs. n Taking responsibility. Nearly half (48%) of decision-makers say it is very important to consider reducing the burden on IT when choosing new software, up from 35% last year. Two thirds (68%) of company leaders say they are now more involved in the procurement process for IT products and tools than they were a year ago. n Supporting IT teams with better IT support tools. Two thirds (65%) of organisations have seen an increase in their IT workload in the past year and 92% want to reduce the burden on IT through their software choices. Changes or upgrades to digital tools are being driven by the preferences of the IT team in 40% of organisations. n Hybrid work is still the preferred way to work. While there are now almost twice as many in-office workers as there were last year (36% vs. 19% in 2022), hybrid work remains the gold standard, with half of respondents splitting their time between home and office. Year-over-year results show a decrease of 10% in the number of businesses that have official rules on the number of days an employee must be in the office, meaning that employees have more flexibility than ever. n Finding new ways to prioritise the customer. Businesses can only function if employees have the right IT support and communication tools, and for customer-facing teams this means having the right technology to seamlessly support customers. Two thirds (66%) of respondents plan to spend more this year on customer experience (CX) technology than they did in 2022. n Partners have a key role in decisionmaking. Over the last year, there has been a 55% increase in the use of technology partners, with 44% of businesses now consulting channel partners when choosing new business communication and IT support tools, compared to 27% who prefer to go directly to the solution provider. For more insights, please visit: www.goto.com/it-priorities-report ······ Metaverse training centre to open in September ARuVR, an end-to-end, enterprise-grade Extended Reality (XR) training platform, has announced a three-year partnership with City, University of London to provide its award-winning platform, AR/VR hardware and expertise to engineering, computer science and applied mathematics undergraduate and postgraduate students within the School of Science and Technology. Officially opening in September 2023, with funding from the Office for Students (OFS), the Interactive Ethical Learning Design Studio will be the UK’s largest bespoke Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Metaverse design training centre, capable of training up to 50 students simultaneously. www.ARuVR.com
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