For those evaluating their budgets this time of year, it can be difficult to gauge what percentage of spending should be dedicated to IT resources. Fortunately, Spiceworks annual State of IT report aggregates information from over 700 companies across North America and Europe to reflect how trends - from the global push for data privacy to domestic investment in Gigabit wifi - are impacting technology budgets across the board. From business size to resource type, the report offers ideas about growing your business in 2020, and which line items to leave behind in the new year.
On the whole, IT spending will either increase or remain constant for 89% of those interviewed. Companies in the EU are countering high GDPR fines with greater spend on cybersecurity, aggressively prioritizing their intellectual property and clients' data privacy. Companies operating domestically are upgrading and maintaining their infrastructure, with many benefiting from recent corporate tax cuts.
Spiceworks' researchers also noted a prominent divide along company size. Larger firms have designated a greater percentage of their spending on cybersecurity concerns, investing more in managed IT services and less in on-premise hardware. The most sought after services include managed hosting (11%), storage and backup (10%), and security (9%). Smaller companies continue to invest in new on-premise resources largely due to hardware end-of-life (62%), efforts to spur business growth (57%), and greater attention to meeting end-user needs (55%).
Software currently holds a greater share of total spend than cloud computing (26% and 21% respectively), though larger firms tend to invest more so in the latter. Across the board, the top concentrations for each are:
| Software Investment | Cloud Computing Investment |
| Operating Systems - 12% | Online Backup / Recovery - 15% |
| Virtualization - 10% | Email Hosting - 11% |
| Productivity - 10% | Online Productivity - 9% |
| Security - 10% | Web Hosting - 9% |
While software and cloud technologies continue to capture budget share, emerging technologies are increasingly capturing the attention of key industry change-makers. Early advocacy from the financial industry has led to the highest adoption of employee security tools (52%), user behavior analytics tools (34%), and cloud workload protection (28%). Healthcare leads the way in anti-ransomware solutions (56%), hardware-based authentication (49%), and IoT adoption (41%). Educational facilities outpace everyone in terms of 3D printing (37%), while IT has the greatest adoption rate for edge computing - a practice whereby data is processed near the edge of a network, improving response time and bandwidth efficiency.
Pro-tip: Curious about how your business could be maximizing its IT spend? Download this free eBook for more information.
Interest in blockchain continues to flourish, with emerging applications such as secure authentication and supply chain management. Blockchain spend is predicted to grow through 2020, as investments in AI, VR, and 3D printing have slowed. For companies more inclined towards emerging technologies, additional priorities include:
Across industry verticals, business stakeholders are looking to up the ROI for their IT investments. If you'd like to learn more about streamlining your IT infrastructure, implementing proactive security resources, and empowering your end-users, reach out for a free consultation.