Tracking The Renegade Technology Buyer

After nearly a decade in hibernation, the business buyer has re-emerged as a major spender and force in IT spending. To better understand the return of tech spending outside the formal IT budget and organization, Forrester focused its Q4 2012 survey of business decision-makers on quantifying the spending, attitudes, and motivations of this newly important segment of tech buyers. The data clearly shows that business spending its own money is not isolated to any one function, vertical, or geography. Business executives are spending their own budgets on hiring dedicated IT staff, acquiring PC and smartphone hardware, and building mobile applications. The most counterintuitive finding is that the execs spending a higher percentage of their budget on technology actually have good relationships with IT and view the CIO's team more positively then the lower-spending business leaders.