Budgets are up, but IT Departments Feel the Pressure as Businesses Demand More
Businesses' IT budgets are rising but overlap with overall business strategy is affecting the role of IT staff as organizations demand more, a new report by Opsview has found.
The report, based on interviews with 550 IT staff across the globe found that IT budgets are standing strong, in spite continued economic pressure. Nearly 4 in 10 businesses have seen an increase in their IT budgets this year, and half of businesses have fended off a decrease. Fewer than 13% of businesses will spend less on IT this year than in 2013.
Even with the rise in budgets, IT departments are finding they are being affected by having to deal more with the pressures coming from business and the strategic goals of the company. 70% of respondents saw more overlap between business and IT, with 50% believing this was affecting their day-to-day job responsibilities.
Michael Walton, C.E.O. of Opsview, commented "As business strategy becomes more dependent upon the systems that run below it, IT have to pick up their pace to make sure their systems are both ready and capable of keeping key business services running."
Business spending on network monitoring and relevant systems is far ahead of spending on cloud computing, the report reveals. Under a quarter of businesses plan to invest in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), while only 14% are interested in spending on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and 9% on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Some 28%, however, will spend in one way or another on cloud infrastructure.
In spite of the heightened IT budgets, two significant areas are set to be overlooked by many companies. Less than 14% of businesses plan to invest any money in hiring staff, in what may set a downbeat outlook for the technology job market. And an incredibly low 2% plan to invest in software defined networks (SDNs), a newer approach aimed at simplifying IT - this is even with the fact three quarters of firms do not yet run any form of SDN.
