2012 IT Budgets, Salaries on the Rise
Carolyn Duffy Maran, reporting for NetworkWorld:
The outlook for IT budgets is solid, with 83% of survey respondents reporting that their 2011 IT budget was greater than or equal to their 2010 IT budget. This figure compares to 48% reporting stable or growing IT budgets in 2009.
Similarly, 85% of IT executives are predicting that their 2012 IT budgets will be greater than or equal to their 2011 figures. Only 65% of respondents made this prediction two years ago.
Another positive indicator is that IT budget allocations will remain steady in 2012, with internal staff expected to receive the largest share of the pie at 37% of spending compared to 38% this year.
Also note the outlook on outsourcing, forever IT’s boogeyman in the closet:
The SIM survey indicated no plans by management to increase offshore outsourcing, which has been a fear among IT professionals over the years. CIOs reported that they spent only 2% of their 2011 IT budgets on offshore outsourcing and 3% on domestic outsourcing. For 2012, they are projecting the same level of investment for offshore and domestic outsourcing.
And finally, don’t underestimate this surprising finding regarding cloud computing spend:
One surprise finding was that CIOs are not planning to allocate a significant amount of their IT budgets to internal or external cloud computing services. Although cloud computing was listed as one of the top applications that CIOs are investing in during 2011, they are spending only a tiny amount of money in this area: an average of 6% of their 2011 IT budgets on internal cloud projects and 5% on external cloud efforts.
Emphasis mine. Interesting that despite all the marketing and the buzzworthiness of cloud computing, the pursestrings are still on hold. Maybe it’s a value realization thing — that cloud, while promising, can’t be presented to the C-level in terms of actual ROI yet? Maybe it’s the backlog of IT services that have been neglected over the past few years, so cloud is hot, but not as hot as things that have been on the to-do list for 24 months?
ERP salespeople, take note: there’s still unmet demand out there. Enterprise cloud/SaaS salespeople: your challenge is to prove that the cloud is now, the value is real and time time has come for private clouds.
What’s your take?
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MIPRO Consulting main website.
