They’re self-confident! (Or self-absorbed?) They’re masters of self-expression! (More selfies anyone?) They love exclamation points! And they really 
emojis! They are millennials – and no longer kids, they are now old enough to be your boss. In fact, it’s probably a good time to stop stereotyping millennials and consider the serious ways they impact IT organizations – especially in the midmarket, where millennials are now directors, CIOs, and CEOs.
A recent Carbonite survey of IT purchasing decision makers revealed that IT pros with fewer than 10 years in the workplace were more likely to rely on cloud technology for business and personal use than IT pros with more than a decade of experience. With expectations that IT solutions will enable the mobile, global world they grew up in, millennial-led IT departments are 44% more likely to have adopted cloud backup than their Baby Boomer counterparts, according to a recent IDC study.
But if you’re thinking of millennials as fans of disruptive technologies only, you might be surprised to learn they value effective legacy apps and are enthusiastic about hybrid cloud projects, said Christopher Chute, vice president of IDC’s cloud and mobility practice. Midmarket millennials are “actually using SaaS to run IT like enterprises would,” Chute said.
The IDC study also found that SMB cloud storage adoption had reached a “mature state in the U.S.”, with nine out of 10 midmarket firms using at least one IT sanctioned cloud storage service. IDC predicts that cloud-workload backup is a market segment that will see significant growth as more customers interact with cloud solutions.
When midmarket companies with millennial-led IT organizations were compared to other midmarket companies, the results were dramatic – even in technology spheres such as business continuity and disaster recovery. Among IDC’s findings:
- 71% of millennials have deployed backup solutions vs. 52% of Boomers
- 55% of millennials engage with sync and share products vs. 43.5% of Boomers
- 25.3% of millennials are using BC/DR solutions vs. 24.6% of Boomers
“There’s such a high percentage of [millennials] that are in leadership positions,” said Chute. “They’re no longer newcomers in the workplace. They’re actually decision makers now.”
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