A new report on IT spending priorities reveals where money might be budgeted for communications services in 2023. Cloud and mobile are key opportunities, according to the survey of IT managers conducted by Info-Tech Research Group.
Cloud computing and next-gen cybersecurity are the first and third technologies, respectively, in which organizations have already invested. The clear winner in the overall category is cloud computing, which has garnered investment from 82% of respondents. That’s 18 percentage points greater than the runner up, application programming interfaces (APIs). Next-gen security was third at 54%.
Cloud computing – at 58% – also took top spot on a question focusing on the technologies that respondents expect to invest in by the end of the year. Though next-gen cybersecurity was fifth (out of six technologies), at 39%, it was only two percentage points behind data lake/lakehouse and APIs, both of which were cited by 41% of respondents.
The report includes views on what technologies are considered the most critical to adopt. Mobile access for employees and cloud for application functionality (both with mean points of 5.3) finished in a second player tie behind big data analytics (5.6). Noteworthy among the 11 categories were cloud for agile infrastructure (5.1, tied with big data collection), mobile for customers (4.8), internet of things (IoT) for product ideas (3.7) and IoT for product tracking (3.6).
The work-from-home trend is hitting IT departments just as it is hitting other business units. And, according to the report, “organizations that embrace a hybrid model for their IT departments see a more effective IT department.”
In general, IT organizations that were seen as most effective were those in which at least 10% of IT roles were in a hybrid or remote model, according to the researchers. Those organizations rated IT’s effectiveness at 6.9 or higher on a 10-point scale. In comparison, organizations with less than 10% of IT in hybrid or remote work environments had a 6.2 effectiveness score.
Info-Tech’s Trends and Priorities 2023 Survey was based on 813 surveys (521 of which were completed) and was conducted between August 9 and September 9, 2022. More than 90% of respondents work in IT departments and more than 84% are manager level or higher.
The picture looks a bit brighter for IT spending today than it did during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when businesses cut back on IT investment.
