Half of UK companies will overwork IT systems in 2003, claims report

The report claims that basic functions such as financial reporting and invoicing are under threat as a result of organisations' main databases being overworked.

According to the survey, based on 100 interviews with UK IT managers, 46% of the participating companies said they are on course to suffer inadequate response times from their core databases in 2003.

One in 20 companies reported that they are already experiencing the problem. The majority (51%) of the sample said that they plan to invest in new hardware to rectify the problem. But Isocra views this as the most expensive of potential remedies.

Denis Howlett, chief operations officer at Isocra, said:

"The problem is more widespread than we anticipated. Worse, the knee-jerk reaction is to plough investment into expensive hardware. For substantially less money, caching software can deliver 10-fold improvements in performance - way beyond the improvements hardware could achieve."

Caching software mirrors centrally held data at a local location. However, only 38% of respondents said that they see software as a cheaper and more effective solution.