• by Ray Schultz , April 11, 2023

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.