IT Operational Budgets Slowly Climbing, Says Computer Economics

The IT spending calculators have been hot and cold in 2014. Spending is up compared to 2013, but overall growth is a little too flat to make everyone happy. You’ll find some folks with smiles on their faces though and some projects that needed to get done have found the road to completion. The early outlook for 2015 is once again indicating the sun will shine if you look in the right places, but overall the IT community won’t be dancing in the streets.

Some of the right places to look, according to forecasters at Computer Economics, are innovations in mobility, business intelligence, and cloud computing that organizations can easily conceptualize as IT investments with business value.

Gradual improvements, like a motorcycle jump over a single bus, barely rate a sideways glance, but that’s what Computer Economics says 2015 has in store for IT. This is anything but an era of freewheeling IT spending. The reality is this is a slow-growth environment and resources are most likely to be applied to maintaining existing infrastructure while investing in transformational technology, according to this report.

The trouble with that prediction is that existing infrastructure, for most companies, is not adequate for transformational technologies like cloud and big data. At least that’s what the report from IBM‘s Institute of Business Value has to say in its most recent report, which you can read about elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred under the headline If Infrastructure Matters, What About i?

Here’s the quick synopsis, along with who stands to gain the most from the research and analysis statisticians at CE:

• IT operational budgets will rise 3 percent at the median. Cloud computing providers will be the primary beneficiaries, along with job seekers.
• IT capital budgets will remain flat, showing little or no growth at the median. IT organizations will continue to invest in enterprise applications, security, and business intelligence. Spending on data center infrastructure will remain weak.
• More than half of IT organizations will increase IT staff headcount. We also will see a shift from the use of contractors to the hiring of more full-time, regular employees.
• The typical IT worker will receive a 3 percent pay raise. IT organizations will need to pay greater attention to recruitment, training, and retention activities.

The 3 percent increase in the median annual change in IT operational budgets in North America that CE forecasts for 2015 would top the 2.7 percent increase in 2014. In 2013, the increase was 2.5 percent. In 2012, the increase was 2.2 percent and in 2011 it was 2 percent.

The Computer Economics report is based on a survey of 128 IT organizations worldwide, including 68 IT organizations in North America.

RELATED STORIES

IT Budgets Increasing; Outsourcing Doesn’t Keep Pace

IDC Says IT Spending Will Come In A Bit Higher In 2014

Gartner Shaves IT Spending Projections For 2014 Again

IDC Revises 2014 Global IT Spending Projections Downward

                     Post this story to del.icio.us
               Post this story to Digg
    Post this story to Slashdot