Latest Reports

• Desktop Support Staffing Ratios 2020

  When viewed as a percentage of the total IT staff, the percentage of desktop support personnel has now reached a three-year low. We expect this metric to stay flat or decline further in the near future for several reasons. In this study, we use four metrics for benchmarking: desktop support staff as a percentage of the IT staff, PCs per desktop support staff member, applications per desktop support staff member, and users per support staff member.

  February, 2020

• Desktop Support Staffing Declines to Three-Year Low

  Today’s desktop and laptop computers are not the hot commodity they were 30 years ago, but they still require a great deal of support. However, when viewed as a percentage of the total IT staff, the percentage of desktop support personnel has now reached a three-year low. This Research Byte explores some reasons behind the decline.

  February, 2020

• Network Support Staffing Plateaus, Despite Increasing Pressure

  The importance of computer networks cannot be overstated in this digital age. However, the level of network support staffing has plateaued in recent years and shows no signs of increasing. In other words, the increasing need for more bandwidth, better security, analytics, and reliability has not driven up the ratio of network support staff to total IT staff in the typical organization. This Research Byte summarizes the five-year trend in network support staffing ratios.

  May, 2020

• Global Equations: The Next Era Of Global Growth: Rise Of Digital Services

  As technology driven services become integral to global business, economies have to pivot towards developing the right digital ecosystem of human resources, infrastructure, business environment to improve its ‘digital’ competitiveness.

  December, 2020

• Enterprise Security Orchestration Platforms – Gravitating Towards AI-Enabled Tools and Contextual Indicators

  The traditional enterprise security platform is evolving.They now incorporate more capabilities into a single enterprise SOAR (security orchestration, automation, and response) platform. The SOAR value proposition has become more evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, because organizations require multi-functional capabilities to secure themselves against new threats.These tools help solve security challenges resulting from a distributed workforce, more BYOD devices, and cloud solutions. This Research Byte summarizes our full RadarView report on the subject.

  October, 2020

• IT Security Staffing Ratios 2020

  IT security staffing has finally increased to match increases in IT spending. In this report, we present the five-year trend in IT security staffing and provide benchmarks for understanding IT security staff head count: as a percentage of the IT staff and as a percentage of the Network and Communications Group. We also analyze IT security staffing in terms of the number of applications, users, and network devices.

  November, 2020

• Organizational Change Management Adoption and Best Practices 2019

  New system projects often fail, not because of problems with the technology but because the new systems are not fully embraced by the workforce. Fortunately, there are formal methodologies that business and IT leaders can apply to establish and carry out an organizational change management program. In this report, we look at adoption trends and maturity of organizational change management by organization size and sector.

  March, 2019

• How Are We Doing? Surveying Users and Reporting IT Performance Metrics

  Two distinct but related IT management best practices-user-satisfaction surveys and IT performance metrics-are either growing slightly or remaining at a consistent level. But in both cases, many companies could use some help in practicing these two disciplines formally and consistently. This Research Byte provides a summary of our full report on user-satisfaction surveys and IT performance metrics adoption and best practices.

  July, 2019

• Understanding IT Procurement Contracts

  Nearly all IT projects require some sort of procurement, whether it is for hardware, software, or services. Therefore, IT project managers need to understand the major element of IT procurement contracts, as outlined in this post.

  November, 2008

• Best Practices for Benchmarking IT Budget Ratios

  Benchmarking is a popular way for IT organizations to justify their IT budgets and better focus their efforts toward continuous improvement. But without following certain principles, business leaders will likely question the validity of the outcome. This report, based on many years of benchmarking exercises at Computer Economics, outlines three complementary approaches to benchmarking.

  February, 2013

• Revisiting the Impact of COVID-19 on IT Organizations in 2020

  Our latest survey shows that that a K-shaped recovery of IT spending has begun. Nearly an equal number of companies have increased their IT budgets in response to the pandemic as those that decreased them, with slightly more actually increasing. This report outlines how the pandemic is affecting IT operational budgets, IT capital budgets, IT staff head counts, compensation, outsourcing, budgets for new projects, and the use of the public cloud. It also shows trends in working from home.

  October, 2020

• IT Security Staffing Catching Up with Existential Threats

  After years of remaining flat in the face of mounting security threats, IT security head count has finally risen as a percentage of the total IT staff. Until 2020, despite a growing array of threats and rising IT security budgets, IT organizations had not been increasing the size of their security teams and instead focused on technology to fight the problem. This Research Byte looks at the factors behind these trends.

  November, 2020