As businesses continue to bounce back from the past 15 months and build out their strategy for the upcoming year, IT decision-makers (ITDMs) are tasked with researching and implementing new technologies. CIO’s Tech Poll: Tech Priorities 2021 research outlines the areas IT leaders will be focused on and measures the direction of spending in those technology categories.
After initial declining budgets last year, it is reassuring to see that tech budgets are holding strong for 2021. Half of ITDMs anticipate an increase over the next 12 months, 42% anticipate their budgets will remain the same, and only 8% expect a budget decrease – which is in line with the 7% in December 2019 prior to the pandemic. The research also found that cybersecurity is the single most important technology project to date and is expected to see the greatest increase in spending, which is no surprise given the recent data breaches and ransomware attacks.
Download this study to explore key findings, including:
- Cybersecurity, business intelligence/analytics, business process management, and customer experience technologies are expected to see the largest increases in tech spending over the next year.
- ITDMs are actively researching 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) and blockchain, but from a usage standpoint, these technologies still have a little way to go.
- Security continues to be a top priority, as ¼ of ITDMs say that cybersecurity is the single most important project their organization is currently working on.
- The biggest challenges around technology implementation remain the same – lack of budget, staff and skillset. Tech vendors much do all they can to make the implementation process as smooth as possible for their customers.
