Microsoft tops CIO vendor list

Chief information officers have named Microsoft as their most indispensable "mega-vendor" during a recent survey by US investment bank Piper Jaffray this week.

The quarterly survey interviewed 135 CIOs, with 45% (61) choosing Microsoft as their most important vendor.

Coming in with over double the mentions as second placed Oracle - SAP, Cisco, IBM, EMC, HP and Apple made up the list, in order of ranking.

Microsoft has topped the American list previously, but this year saw its lead widen from 33% approval during 2012.

"CIOs state that 'there are really no alternatives to Microsoft,'" Piper Jaffray said.

"[Others said] 'MS services are getting better and will allow us to move more to the cloud,' and 'we are highly invested in their technologies and dependent on them extending their platforms.'"

"We believe Microsoft's dominance in the enterprise is under appreciated, and some of the threats against Microsoft, such as alternatives to the Windows desktop OS in the enterprise or productivity software, may be over-hyped in the near term.

"That said, keep in mind that our CIO survey does not address the large consumer business for Microsoft, which faces much more intense competitive pressures than its enterprise business."

Spend:

Microsoft also tops the software list, with 98.5% of respondents saying they use the company's products, with Vmware (91.1%), Symantec (78.5%), Oracle (76.3%), Citrix (71.9%) and IBM (64.4%) following suit.

The report, published by Redmond Channel Partner, says over half (56%) of CIOs plan to maintain their spending with the company, translating to a spending growth of 2.1% for Microsoft.