IT Economic Outlook Study Reveals IT Spending Tempered by Cautious Optimism

Many CIOs are reporting a new-found economic confidence and say they plan to increase IT budgets and continue spending on new projects. They also indicate a growing interest in investment in edge technologies such as mobile, social and cloud.

The latest CIO Magazine IT Economic Outlook Survey reveals that almost half of 200 top IT executives surveyed in the magazine’s latest Tech Poll look forward to increasing IT spending by 3 percent, albeit with some reservations due to continued concerns about the economy.

Forty-seven percent of CIOs surveyed reported that IT spending increases are on the horizon, up from 34 percent just nine months ago in an August 2011 Tech Poll, but six percentage points lower than reported one year ago, in April 2011. At the same time, just one in five CIOs anticipate budget cuts, a figure consist with last years survey results.

Within the next several years, innovative technologies such as mobile, social and cloud will dominate IT budge share. Expect to see a 12 percent increase over three years, as well as impact headcount and staff roles as CIO shift spending away from core technologies such as infrastructure, network, storage, compute and ERP. Expect to see a 12 percent drop in spending on core technologies during the same time frame.

Investment in hardware will take a hit as CIOs steer budget dollars toward outsourced IT services including cloud, increased IT compensation costs, and, mobile/wireless and applications, several key areas identified for spending increases.

CIOs at larger enterprises — those with 1,000 or more employees — will take the lead in IT spending plans for mobile/wireless and applications compared to their SMB counterparts: mobile/wireless (61 percent versus 40 percent) and applications (57 percent versus 42 percent), respectively.

Survey respondents not only expect advances in technology and new emerging IT models to change the way employees work but anticipate the need to make significant changes to their IT organization’s staff roles.

Driving this tectonic shift in the enterprise are next-generation mobile devices and a groundswell movement in BYOD, popularly referred to as the consumerization of IT. The most recent tech poll indicates that 52 percent of IT leaders are changing IT staff roles to support and address BYOD, a figure that climbs to 62 percent when looking at enterprise organizations compared to 43 percent for SMBs.

Adaptation to the unstoppable influx of BYOD appears to be both supportive and guarded. While 57 percent of CIOs have a BYOD policy in place, it’s clear that many IT leaders are not quite fully empowering their BYOD users. Thirty-seven percent of those companies with a BYOD policy report that they allow the use of personal devices at work but prefer that employees refrain from using them. Another 16 percent encourage the use of personal devices but don’t force employees to bring in their own devices. Four percent of organizations require employees to use their own devices for work.

Sanctioned or not, BYOD is having a financial impact on companies. Almost half of IT leaders report no impact on costs as a result of having a BYOD policy while 25 percent report an increase in expenditures. Twenty-two percent of CIOs report that BYOB is saving their companies money.

Download CIO Magazine IT Economic Outlook Survey

Lynn Haber is a freelance writer based in Massachusetts. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline, on Facebook, and on Google +.