AUSTIN, TX — (Marketwired) — 09/30/15 — , the professional network for IT, today announced the results of its “” report, a survey examining the technology budget and adoption trends of IT professionals in North America and EMEA. According to the survey, IT budgets are expected to increase by only one percent in 2016. Additionally, nearly 60 percent of respondents believe IT headcount will remain flat despite expected increases in company revenue.
Sixty-seven percent of the IT professionals surveyed cite technology end-of-life (EOL) as a driving force behind new hardware, software and services investments in 2016. In fact, Spiceworks– network data shows 66 and 60 percent of companies in Spiceworks are still running Windows XP and respectively, operating systems that have reached EOL. Among those planning operating system refreshes in 2016, 47 percent said they planned to invest in and 32 percent said they planned a Windows Server 2003 migration. Additionally, 12 percent said they–re planning a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 migration, a database application that reaches end-of-life on April 12, 2016.
IT spend on security hardware, software, and services will remain flat year over year with IT professionals planning to allocate six percent of their total IT budget to security. Security solutions will make up six and nine percent of hardware and software budgets next year respectively and six percent of hosted/cloud budgets. However, 59 percent of respondents don–t feel their organization is adequately investing in security and 48 percent don–t feel their company data is adequately protected. Additionally, only 26 percent of respondents said recent high-profile security incidents have led their organization to change its security practices.
“The report paints a clear picture of how IT professionals expect to juggle competing priorities with only small increases in budget,” said Sanjay Castelino, VP of Marketing at Spiceworks. “In 2016, they–ll be forced to prioritize where to allocate time and resources across their departments and more often than not, we expect they–ll focus on pragmatic, –must do– projects that keep their businesses up and running.”
Additional survey results include:
IT professionals plan to spend 37 percent of their 2016 IT budgets on hardware projects, a decrease in allocation of four points year over year. Of that, 21 percent will be spent on desktops, 19 percent will be spent on servers, and 16 percent will be spent on laptops.
Software spending follows closely behind with IT professionals allocating 31 percent of 2016 budgets to these projects, a decrease of two points from 2015. Of this portion of the budget, 15 percent will be spent on virtualization, 15 percent on operating systems, and 15 percent on productivity suites.
Thirteen percent of IT budgets will be spent on managed services projects next year, a three point increase and the highest jump in budget allocation year over year compared to other project areas. Nineteen percent of managed services budgets will be spent on IT services, 14 percent on connectivity/bandwidth, and 13 percent on storage/backup/archiving services.
Spending on cloud services is expected to increase slightly in 2016 with IT professionals planning to spend 14 percent of their budgets in this area next year.
Seventeen percent of hosted/cloud-based services budgets in 2016 will be spent on email hosting, 14 percent on web hosting, and 13 percent on online backup/recovery.
Though only 29 percent of IT professionals stated that hosted/cloud services were important to current business practices, 43 percent believe that these services will be much more important to their organizations in the future.
The survey was conducted in July 2015 and included 839 respondents from North America and EMEA. Respondents are among the millions of IT professionals in Spiceworks and represent a variety of company sizes including small-to-medium-sized businesses as well as enterprises. Respondents come from a variety of industries including manufacturing, healthcare, non-profits, education, government, and finance. For more information and a complete list of survey results, visit .
Spiceworks– Voice of IT shares statistics, trends, and opinions collected from millions of IT professionals on the global technology issues that are important to them.
Spiceworks is the professional network millions of IT professionals use to connect with one another and thousands of technology brands. The company simplifies how IT professionals discover, buy and manage more than $600 billion in technology products and services each year. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Spiceworks is backed by Adams Street Partners, Austin Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Goldman Sachs, Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital. For more information visit .
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Jennifer Faulk
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