Industry survey highlights the importance of reliable maintenance and support services

A recent industry survey questioning 2000 IT professional has revealed that over 91 per cent of IT and data centre professionals believe that “maintenance and call out services are equally important as product features when it comes to selecting a new equipment provider”.

The survey, which was conducted by KOHLER Uninterruptible Power, a KOHLER company, further demonstrated the importance of reliability; divulging that 42.62 per cent of respondents believe “maximum reliability is the number one product feature they look for when selecting a new IT system”. Although remaining the most popular response, this result represented a significant change in priorities from KOHLER Uninterruptible Power’s last survey, which was completed in 2010 and where 74.5 per cent of respondents cited reliability as their number one concern.

The importance of a low total cost of ownership (TCO) has grown dramatically in this time. In 2010 just 3.6 per cent of those questioned choosing low TCO as their most important product quality. Today this figure has risen to over 29 per cent as increasing energy costs and harsher penalties for carbon emissions begin to impact businesses priorities.

When looking specifically at supplier attributes, reliability was once again the most important factor to a potential buyer. Over 40 per cent of the survey’s respondents cited ‘a reputation for quality and reliability’ as their most important supplier quality. Unsurprisingly, price and value remained the second most popular option, receiving 31.15 per cent of the vote.

KOHLER Uninterruptible Power’s sales director, Alan Luscombe, commented on the survey’s findings: “What’s clear is that IT and data centre dominated businesses are being squeezed in several directions and this causes fairly rapid shifts in their priorities. Over the past three years we have seen a combination of reliability and TCO become key areas for our customers as they try to deal with increasing energy costs and a continuing progression in terms of availability expectations.”

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