Report: 60% of Irish firms struggle to maintain IT

As many as 60% of Irish businesses are struggling to maintain technology services with reduced budgets, according to a new report on cloud computing by Digital Planet.

"Irish business is facing a perfect storm of reduced budgets, increased technology complexity and security threats, combined with a growing shortage of skilled IT people to manage the challenges," said Brian Larkin, operations director, Digital Planet.

Despite these problems and much talk about the benefits of cloud computing, the Digital Planet report finds that half of respondents (49%) have no plans to consider outsourcing to the cloud.

Digital Planet, the IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) subsidiary of HiberniaEvros Technology Group, recently announced a €1.6m investment to provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service to Irish organisations.

Mr Larkin said: "IaaS allows Irish companies to reduce the headaches, resourcing and cost of maintaining in-house servers, networks, storage and applications.

"Companies can start the process by outsourcing part or all of their IT infrastructure."

The Digital Planet report estimates that a shift to the cloud can cut costs by up to 35% as well as releasing resources and time to focus on core business.