COVID-19 has caused an increase in digital transformation initiatives, software deployments and tech spends, thus changing how enterprises build the perfect tech stack.

TechRepublic Premium conducted a survey to find out how companies are purchasing and deploying technology as well as selecting their vendors. The survey compared results to a similar survey conducted last year.

The survey asked the following questions:

• How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your technology spend in the past 12 months?
• Which of the following hardware software or cloud services is your company currently using?
• Which of the following hardware software or cloud services is your company planning to deploy in the next 12 months?
• What SaaS features and applications are deployed or will be deployed in your business during the next 12 months?
• What services and vendors has your company tried, tested or experimented with in the past 12 months?
• What is the most important factor for your business when selecting and deploying technology?
• What is the most important factor for your business when it comes to selecting a specific technology vendor?
• Which of the following people in your business are involved in technology purchasing decisions?
• Who in your business has the final say in purchasing decisions for major technology deployments?

COVID-19 impacted small business IT deployment and spending over the past year for 46% of respondents. Another impact of COVID-19 and the remote work mandate: when asked what services and vendors their respective SMBs tried, tested or experimented with in the past 12 months, respondents overwhelmingly answered Zoom (60%). In the previous year, only 27% experimented with Zoom. Most SMBs are also testing and experimenting with features, tools and apps accessed through common services like Microsoft Office 365 (56%), Microsoft Azure (43%), Amazon AWS (43%) and Adobe software (37%).

Consistent with last year’s survey results, SMBs are using an array of internal servers, cloud servers, hybrid cloud servers and SaaS to satisfy their IT and business needs. Yet in 2021, 46% of respondents rely on internal on-premises systems, which is a decrease from the previous year’s response of 63%.

It’s no surprise that SMBs are turning to cloud services for solutions. However, in 2021, some 44% of respondents are using a hybrid combination of internal and cloud servers, which is notably higher than the 2020 survey result of 39%. Furthermore, survey results show that 26% of respondents use more than one cloud service, which is up significantly from the 17% reported in 2020.

The 2021 survey also reports that 45% of respondents believe fulfilling business needs is the most important factor when making decisions on IT deployment. This reinforces the sentiment from the previous survey where 31% of respondents cited fulfilling business needs as the most important factor. In both surveys, fulfilling business needs was by far the highest percentage factor.

To read all of the results from the survey, plus analysis, download the full report.