The State Of Enterprise IT Budgets: 2008

Going into 2008, North American and European enterprises had IT budget priorities that generally matched 2007 priorities. Overall, they expected to increase 2008 IT budgets by 3% — the same percentage increase that they planned for their 2007 IT budgets. CIOs and IT departments continue to focus on improving IT efficiency and helping the business cut costs and improve productivity. IT departments are working toward better alignment with business but are still small contributors to business innovation. Information management and security software and storage hardware are the top spending areas. IT services will hold generally stable, while IT outsourcing will expand slightly. IT staff spending will increase, with both number of IT positions and average compensation edging higher in 2008. Finally, we see a small number of IT departments starting to track their energy costs — those who do are expecting these costs to rise.