IT budgets are on the rise despite fears by leaders
of a recession, according to the 2023 CIO Tech Innovation study from Foundry.
Of the CIOs polled, 51% expect their budgets to increase, while 37% will hold steady. Only 12% expect a
reduction.
But 77% believing a recession is coming, or is already here. And 77% are consolidating vendor contracts to reduce expenses, while over 50% are slowing down work on non-critical
projects.
Yet 64% are accelerating work on tech projects that could alleviate the impact of a slowdown. In addition, 65% are increasing investments in real-time security monitoring and
forensics, and 49% on business intelligence tools, data analytics frameworks (46%) and machine learning (45%).
The top technologies now being actively researched
are:
- AI and machine learning — 32%
- Blockchain — 25%
- Secure
access service edge (SASE) — 25%
- Employee experience technologies — 24%
- IO/OT convergence—24%
- Windows 11 — 23%
- Robotic press automation — 23%
But 51% feel they lack the appropriate skillsets for new
technology deployment, and 50% suffer from general staff shortages.
To counter, this, 76% are “upskilling” existing talent, or re-skilling existing talent. But 41% are hiring
full-time employees (if they can find them), 32% are using managed service providers and 24% are hiring gig workers.
When evaluating new tech vendors, 71% use pilot testing and product
demonstrations and 66% attend external events or conferences, while 50% talk to a small group of peers and 41% rely on reviews written by experts.
Foundry, an IDG
company, surveyed 276 senior IT decision-makers in January 2023.
The companies represented have an average of 11,384 employees and average revenue of $5.98 billion.