IT budgets up next year

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(Source: Stockfresh)

28 July 2014

Over 40% of IT professionals expect an increase in IT budgets in 2015. However 60% don’t expect their organisation to hire additional IT staff next year.

Spiceworks 2014 “State of IT” report, a survey examining the technology budget and adoption trends of IT professionals in North America and EMEA, has found that 42% of companies will spend more on IT next year, but despite higher budgets and a growing number of technologies entering the workplace there will be less staff hired next year.

The survey took in responses from 1,120 IT pros in North America and the EMEA region who are part of the 5 million strong global Spiceworks network. They worked at a range of companies, including SMEs and enterprises.

On average, Spiceworks found, organisations will spend $253,000 (€188,350) on IT products and services this year.

“Technology trends like cloud and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) are increasingly impacting the workplace, making it necessary for IT professionals to manage more complex environments so employees can remain productive,” said Kathryn Pribish, voice of IT programme manager at Spiceworks.

“We’re finding that while companies are investing in technology solutions, they’re not committing to an equal investment in hiring the IT professionals who make sure technologies function properly and help employees get their jobs done.”

The survey found that 61% of IT pros are using cloud services today with an additional 8% planning to deploy a cloud service in the next six months. Cloud adoption is especially pronounced in organisations with less than 250 employees.

IT professionals in North America are more likely to deploy cloud services compared to their peers in EMEA. 65% of IT professionals in North America are using cloud services against 56% in EMEA.

Of those who have deployed a cloud service, 80% are using web hosting, 58% have invested in email hosting, and 51% have deployed a cloud-based productivity solution.

Looking ahead, online back-up and recovery, productivity solutions and infrastructure hosting are the top cloud services IT professionals plan to start using in the next six months.

The survey found that 68% of organisations are supporting BYOD today. Of those, 60% are supporting employee-owned smartphones, 51% are supporting employee-owned tablets, and 38% support employees’ laptops.

 

Antony Savvas, Computerworld UK

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