Businesses set to increase IT spend in 2016

Three quarters of UK businesses plan to increase IT budget next year, with 62% identifying security as a top priority.

75% of UK businesses plan to increase spending on IT next year, with 62% identifying IT security as a top priority for expenditure, according to a new survey conducted by leading IT Solution provider CCS Media.


As well as improving security, other key priorities reported were investing in IT for business innovation (43%) and IT that would offer an enhanced customer experience (37%). Organisations anticipated spending 21% of their IT budgets on cyber-security solutions, with a further 18% of budgets earmarked for investment in cloud technologies, with respondents also saying that 14% of their budgets would be spent on improving existing IT infrastructure.


The survey of more than 200 UK IT decision makers found that the key driver for increased IT investment was ensuring IT better serves the business overall (64%). Ensuring IT is a core strategy enabler (63%) and improving alignment between IT and business unit teams (54%) were also identified as key reasons for increasing investment in IT. Only 1% of businesses said that they expected to see a decrease in their IT budgets in the next 12 months.


CCS Media Director James Hardy commented: “It is clear that IT is viewed as central to business success by the majority of organisations and they plan to invest in it accordingly. Unsurprisingly, given the sheer volume of high-profile breaches in the past 12 months, many businesses are becoming increasingly security conscious and are focussing on protecting their key business and data assets.


“Organisations are not allowing security concerns to prevent them further utilising IT to innovate and enhance the customer experience – and are willing to invest significant portions of their IT budget to achieve these goals. This suggests that businesses are still committed to using technology to improve processes and practices but are doing so with security at front of mind.”


With organisations focusing on security more than half (51%) of businesses said they were planning to invest in private cloud technologies, with 30% looking at hybrid cloud and only 12% focusing on public cloud offerings. However, respondents appeared hopeful that security around hybrid cloud and public cloud offerings would improve over the next two years, with 37% saying they would focus on hybrid offerings and 14% on public cloud solutions in 2018.


CCS Media recently announced that its technology and business solutions event, Future Thinking, will be returning to Islington’s Business Design Centre on Wednesday 18th November. The Future Thinking expo is sponsored by HP, Dell, Lenovo, Cisco and Microsoft, and will build on the success of last year’s event, which attracted over 700 delegates and 55 industry-leading vendors. Executives from some of the world’s largest IT companies will be discussing the key issues that are currently affecting IT decision makers in a series of keynotes and breakout sessions. The event also features an exhibition of solutions from leading cloud, storage, security and business automation technology vendors.

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