News

Survey Finds Modest Growth in Tech Spending Expectations

• By Scott Bekker
• July 17, 2003

A survey by analyst firm Aberdeen Group found that CIOs have slightly upgraded their IT spending plans over the next six months to a year but that even the increased spending remains in the low single digits. Further, some of the areas CIOs expect to spend money on first include technologies that reduce the need for IT staff.

"The survey shows that IT buyers are gradually opening their wallets. Their priority is to spend money on technology solutions that enable them to optimize existing business opportunities and processes through superior service," Aberdeen analyst Hugh Bishop said in a statement.

The quarterly survey showed enterprises expect to increase IT spending by 3.4 percent. That's up from 2.7 percent in the last version of the survey.

The top five application categories that IT buyers intend to spend money on are content/document management applications, customer service/support, employee self-service, help desk and field services applications, and e-mail/messaging.

The top three technology infrastructure solutions that customers most strongly intend to make purchases on are security gateways and services, network and systems management and application development tools, according to Aberdeen.

A free, short version of the $495 report is available at www.aberdeen.com.