IT BUDGETS ARE ON THE RISE for 2020, with outdated IT and escalating security concerns the top drivers, according to Spiceworks’ annual 2020 State of IT study. Overall, 44% of respondents plan to increase their IT budgets in 2020, compared to 38% in 2019. Those organizations that expect IT budget growth next year anticipate an 18% increase. Only 8% of businesses expect IT budgets to decline in 2020.
Factors behind that spending vary by company size and location, however. For example, 25% of enterprises report that a recent security incident is driving them to increase their 2020 IT budget, compared to only 4% of small businesses. And small businesses are more likely to purchase new technologies due to end-of-life events and end-user need, the study finds.
On average, organizations surveyed plan to spend 33% of their IT budgets on hardware, 29% on software, 22% on hosted/cloud-based services, and 15% on managed IT services. The study finds that small companies plan to spend a significantly higher portion of their IT budgets on hardware, but as company sizes grow, businesses are spending less on hardware and more on managed IT services.
Across all company sizes surveyed, the top hardware spend will go toward laptops (17%), desktops (17%), servers (14%), and networking (8%). Budget allocations for software are targeted for operating systems (13%), industry-specific applications (11%), productivity suites (10%), and virtualization software (10%).
In the hosted/cloud-based services category, respondents will be buying online productivity solutions (14%), online backup/recovery (12%), and email hosting (10%).
Top budget allocations in managed IT services include managed hosting (13%), managed hardware support (11%), and managed storage/backup (11%). Companies with under 100 employees will be spending the most on managed hosting and managed IT help desk (both at 13%), followed by managed hardware support, managed storage/backup, and managed communication (all at 12%).
So MSPs, get those purchase orders ready. Your customers have money to spend!
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