TECHNOLOGY

Despite economic uncertainty, most IT decision makers say their organizations will accelerate technology spending

Zoe Padgett

September 2, 2022 | 4 min read

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Key findings:

Despite economic uncertainty, most IT decision makers say their organizations will accelerate technology spending

In the U.S., 70% of IT decision makers say that technology purchases at their organization are primarily driven by an IT department rather than another department like finance or procurement, or by the department that is using the technology; in large organizations with 500 or more employees, that percentage jumps to 84%, compared to 49% for smaller organizations. The approach to technology varies, with 61% saying their organization approaches technology as a necessity to run their business and 36% say they see technology as an essential source of innovation. 

Regardless of their approach to technology, most IT decision makers say their organizations have accelerated technology adoption over the last 6 months, with 67% accelerating adoption of existing technology, 62% accelerating purchase of new technology, and 57% accelerating hiring in the IT department. They’re also optimistic about the future, with 71% expecting their organization’s technology spending to increase over the next 6 months. Organizations that see technology as a way to innovate plan to add more technology solutions to their infrastructure (61%) or upgrade their existing solutions with more functionality (56%). Those that see technology as a necessity plan to add more seats to their existing deployments (45%).

IT decision makers expect their organizations to make cuts over the next 6 months

About 9 in 10 IT decision makers are somewhat or very optimistic that their organization would make it through a recession, but 4 in 5 expect some changes in the next 6 months due to economic factors. The effect is more pronounced for organizations with 500 or more employees compared to smaller organizations; 31% of IT decision makers at larger organizations expect their organization to outsource IT functions, compared to 19% at smaller organizations. Similarly, 28% at larger organizations expect a hiring freeze in the IT department (18% at smaller organizations), 26% expect their organization to downgrade software or cloud service subscriptions (17% at smaller organizations), and 25% expect their organization to rely more heavily on AI solutions (24% at smaller organizations). 

Overall, 62% of IT decision makers say their organization is somewhat or very likely to stop using one of their current SaaS or cloud service providers in the next 6 months, with 89% of them saying it’s due to economic uncertainty. With spending increasing, perhaps organizations are looking to consolidate their providers.

Quality and security are top-of-mind as organizations look for new cloud service providers

IT decision makers say their organizations are using a wide variety of cloud service providers, including Google Cloud (53%), Amazon Web Services (40%), Azure (36%), IBM Cloud (31%), Oracle (24%), and Salesforce (24%). Despite economic uncertainty, 77% say their organization is somewhat or very likely to begin using a new cloud service provider in the next 6 months. We asked them to rank seven factors in order of importance when choosing a new cloud provider. Quality of service ranked first, with security a close second, followed by cost and reliability in third and fourth place, then support and scalability in fifth and sixth. Social responsibility values were ranked last.

When it comes to SaaS providers, Microsoft 365 beats Google Workspace (54% vs. 40%). Another 43% of IT decision makers say their organization uses Zoom, and 28% use Oracle.

Data privacy is a growing priority as organizations fear whistleblower reports

Data privacy is more important to most organizations than it was 2 years ago, according to IT decision makers. At large organizations, 69% say data privacy is a high priority (55% at smaller organizations), 75% say data privacy is more important to their organization than 2 years ago (59% at smaller organizations), and 80% say their organization has increased investment in data privacy from 2 years ago (59% at smaller organizations). 

While 94% of IT decision makers are somewhat or very confident in their organization’s ability to keep user data private, 68% are somewhat or very concerned that data privacy weaknesses will be exposed by a whistleblower in the next 12 months (76% at larger organizations vs. 54% at smaller organizations).

Despite these fears, almost all IT decision makers are somewhat or very comfortable reporting concerns about data privacy to leaders within their organization (94%) and are somewhat or very confident that leaders within their organization would take the right actions if informed about potential threats to data privacy (92%). They also generally believe that whistleblowers in their organization are protected under federal law (83%) and that their organization has a written procedure for reporting data privacy concerns (86%).

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