Nearly half (46%) of organisations surveyed in the TechTarget/ESG 2024 Technology spending intentions leer are increasing their IT funds this year.
The poll of 1,432 technology resolution-makers worldwide came upon that security is the number 1 priority for companies.
Nearly a fifth (19%) of IT resolution-makers idea to increase their IT spending in 2024 by 10% or extra, whereas finest 4% intend to decrease their IT budgets this year. Alternatively, half of the IT resolution-makers surveyed mentioned their IT budgets hold remained flat. The sectors seeing the finest increases in IT spending are finance, manufacturing and communications/media, whereas education, retail and healthcare are trailing.
IT spending is being pushed by necessities to meet regulatory compliance. For occasion, European regulations such as the Digital Services and products Act, Data Act, European Properly being Data Dwelling (EHDS), Data Governance Act and AI Act are aimed at forcing transparency, to blame knowledge use and improved cyber security all around the European Union.
Moreover, the functionality Cybersecurity Certification Plan is location to rob security standards for IT, cloud and 5G deployments, offering companies a competitive edge whereas guaranteeing belief for patrons.
Globally, cyber security (65%) and knowledge management (54%) are the pinnacle areas of IT utilize. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), among the 470 IT resolution-makers polled, there is furthermore a give consideration to application style (52%).
Of the 151 IT resolution-makers in EMEA who’re investing in networking, the vast majority (65%) cited network security as their high priority. IT resolution-makers named digital non-public networks, firewalls and zero-belief networks as their high three areas of deliberate network tech investment for 2024.
Storage and backup investment plans for 2024 furthermore unusual a important bias against warding off danger and building resilience. At the identical time, storage spending plans lean against the cloud, but very sturdy on-premise storage spending plans are furthermore fresh.
When asked about deliberate storage and knowledge protection technology investments over the following twelve months, the overwhelming majority of responses indicated plans of arguably a “defensive” nature. Therefore, the pinnacle spending priority for IT resolution-makers is knowledge governance, danger and compliance, followed by disaster restoration, cyber resilience, business continuity and ransomware protection.
Cloud strategies
The ideas displays that merely over a third of the leer’s EMEA participants (36%) are taking a cloud-first system to unusual application deployments, which is a little down on a the same leer applied by TechTarget in 2023.
Assist then, around half of the participants indicated that their organisation was favouring a cloud-first strategy when selecting the finest ambiance to deploy unusual applications and workloads.
Here’s in line with IT spending trends being viewed all around the broader IT business, with public cloud companies, such as Amazon Web Services and products (AWS), monitoring a shift in customer cloud spending, and enterprises focusing extra on optimising their unusual environments, in preference to ramping up their migration plans.
Taking a survey at the key areas of investment in application style, IT resolution-makers seem like inserting extra emphasis this year on cloud-native style and knowledge-pushed choices such as knowledge orchestration and exact verbal exchange.
The IT resolution-makers had been furthermore polled about their deliberate investments in integration technologies. The responses showed a continued shift against cloud-based and automation-pushed application integration approaches, along with a tough give consideration to automating tasks and streamlining workflows by application programming interfaces (APIs) and built-in systems.
The tip situation of machine style investment for 2024 is DevOps (35%), which remains to be a astronomical situation of focus in enterprises. IT resolution-makers are increasingly utilizing DevOps methodologies to automate the continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) of code and application infrastructure.
Compared with knowledge from 2023, technology areas seeing a a lot bigger focus in 2024 encompass API management, serverless/capabilities-as-a-service (FaaS) and service mesh.
Enterprise application plans
Taking a survey at enterprise application spending, the understand suggests organisations are optimising workflows with gleaming direction of management tools, boosting efficiency and squeezing out waste in a worth-still year.
Industry direction of automation (BPA) is being previous to streamline repetitive tasks. Two-thirds of IT resolution-makers in EMEA (66%) idea to fabricate a important investment in enterprise resource planning (ERP) over the following twelve months. The 2nd greatest situation of deliberate investment is supply chain (46%), whereas governance and regulatory compliance (GRC) is third (41%).
When asked about the consumer-centric tools they idea to deploy over the following twelve months, North American IT resolution-makers had generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools high of their list of priorities. In EMEA, customer companies tools had been high of the list (34%), with GenAI, chatbots and customer relationship management (CRM) taking 2nd pickle (29%) in phrases of priorities for 2024.
Discontinue-person computing priorities
Curiously, whereas US IT leaders are prioritising spending on PCs and Dwelling windows 11 upgrades, for these in EMEA, Dwelling windows 11 deployments and migration projects finest fabricate it to sixth pickle on their list of person computing spending priorities. Their high priority in this class is desktop productivity, with PC refresh projects their 2nd-best priority for 2024.
Correct below a quarter of EMEA IT resolution-makers are prioritising digital desktop infrastructure (VDI) initiatives. More fresh offerings such as desktop as a service (13%) and PC prospects seem less fashionable.
Nonetheless over a third (36%) hold made productivity suites such as Microsoft Place of business and Google G-Suite their high priority for 2024. Here’s at danger of be a result of hybrid working and the truth that productivity suites not finest provide a unified platform that streamlines workflows, collaboration and enhances overall efficiency, but furthermore creates cost savings, improves management of IT and bolsters security.
The understand came upon verbal exchange and collaboration machine sprawl to be a concern for many organisations. Nearly a third (30%) of the 172 IT resolution-makers planning unified communications initiatives over the following twelve months peruse consolidation of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) platforms as their high priority.
For organisations that are happy with their unusual UCC supplier, virtually a quarter (24%) idea to undertake unusual gains as these platforms continue to adapt and converge, especially in the contact centre.
The bigger image
Broadly speaking, EMEA and North American IT resolution-makers appear to hold the same spending priorities, at least when comparing the pinnacle four initiatives they idea to make investments in over the following two years. These are cyber security, cloud, knowledge management and automation.
Alternatively, when comparing the fifth best response for spacious tech initiatives of 2024, North American IT resolution-makers are prioritising GenAI, whereas EMEA respondents establish IT service management (ITSM) in fifth pickle and GenAI in eighth pickle.
Overall, the increased give consideration to cyber security is resulting in investment past security classes, along side networking, infrastructure, applications (DevSecOps) and GenAI. Digital transformation remains to be a high business driver of tech investment among the IT resolution-makers polled.
Increased and extra digitally mature organisations are furthermore prioritising customer journey initiatives.