ICT is increasingly underpinning the business-critical functions of most organisations. At the same time supporting the ICT estate is becoming more complex and fragmented. What levels of support are organisations receiving from vendors and suppliers? Are maintenance and support costs increasing? Are organisations finding managing their different support and maintenance contracts a challenge?

This survey was developed to tackle some of these supplier management and support questions by gauging the opinion of UK businesses who rely heavily on their ICT infrastructure. 2e2 commissioned the survey to gain a better understanding of how organisations are currently managing their supplier maintenance and support contracts, the challenges they are currently facing and whether they feel they are receiving a consistent level of ICT support across their business.

The survey then goes on to investigate how organisations currently manage their ICT assets and whether managing them in silos is having a detrimental effect on their business. By exploring this, the research aims to highlight how many organisations are paying support on hardware and software they no longer use. Furthermore, the research shows that the majority of organisations do believe that they could reduce maintenance, support and overall operational costs if they move towards a more standardised ICT infrastructure with fewer suppliers, assuming the increased accountability involved in delivering support services.

200 IT directors within large enterprise organisations were surveyed by independent research company Vanson Bourne.