Spiceworks: four main IT trends

Infographic created by Glorium Technologies

1. Even though companies' revenues are growing, IT budget investments are going to remain the same.
2. As a result, CIO's will have to cope with their strategic plans with the same budget as it was in the previous year.
3. Security concerns are popular among IT specialists, but still they are not going to spend much on it.
4. End of life of a product is the main boost for IT expenses in 2016.

IT budget

The majority of the companies surveyed are going to increase their IT budget max by $2,000 (worldwide statistics, comparing 2015 and 2016). 42% claimed their budget to remain flat, 38% - to increase, 10% - decrease. Everything is clear and simple: to keep cost low.
IT staff numbers are not going to increase, either: 59% - no changes, 34% - increase, 4% - decrease.

There are four main priorities in 2016 IT budget: hardware (37%), software (31%), cloud-based projects (14%) and managed services (13%).

Hardware and software

Laptops won't be the most popular hardware in 2016, desktops are still to win. 21% of hardware expenses will go to desktops, 19% to servers, 16% to laptops, 10% to networking, 6% to external storage and 6% to mobile and tablets.

There is an even distribution in the software expenses: 15% - visualization, OS and productivity, 10% - CRM, backup and database. 9% - security.

IT investements

The main reasons for IT investments are end of life, growth or additional needs, upgrades or refresh cycles, end user need, project need, budget availability, application compatibility and new technologies or features.

Security concerns

After studying answers to the question "Do you believe that your security is on a descent level?", we were quite surprised. 61% claimed that they didn't conduct security audits and 59% stated their security investments were not adequate and with 51% not seeing security investments as a 2016 priority.