IT Budgets Are Up... By A Measly 1%, Though

Bad news for IT experts in the West. According to a survey, IT budgets are expected to increase by only one per cent in 2016. On top of that, the IT headcount is expected to stay pretty much the same.

All of that, despite the fact that the demand for IT experts has exploded, and that Europe will need 800,000 IT security experts by 2020.

The “2016 State of IT” report done by Spiceworks says 67 per cent of the IT professionals surveyed cite technology end-of-life (EOL) as a driving force behind new hardware, software and services investments in 2016.

For example, some 66 per cent of companies are still running Windows XP and 60 per cent are running Windows Server 2003, both operating systems which have reached EOL.

“Among those planning operating system refreshes in 2016, 47 per cent said they planned to invest in Windows 10 and 32 per cent said they planned a Windows Server 2003 migration,” it says in the follow-up press release.

“Additionally, 12 percent said they’re planning a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 migration, a database application that reaches end-of-life on April 12, 2016.”

The spending on security hardware, software and services will also remain pretty much the same, but companies do plan on allocating six per cent of their total IT budget to security.

However, 59 per cent of respondents don’t feel their organization is adequately investing in security and 48 per cent don’t feel their company data is adequately protected. Additionally, only 26 per cent of respondents said recent high-profile security incidents have led their organization to change its security practices.

Author: Sead Fadilpašic