Making plans is important in any case. When speaking about business though, it becomes crucial. And it’s not restricted to particular area of the one’s activity. IT department is influenced, as well. Currently, it is perfect time to plan your budget for IT. Have you already started? No? Then this reading will be extremely useful.
Planning IT budget, not only day-to-day aspects should be taken into consideration. Strategic issues and development prospects should be paid attention to either. What is more, IT budget planning should cover methods of optimizing and minimizing budget.
Gartner report predicts that any topic can be generated by gadgets on their own by 2025. As a consequence, you should thoroughly plan how to manage and process big data. Have you thought about switching to Cloud solutions and making your business processes more flexible. 2016 is a prefect year for such changes. If you have a question “Why?’, the answer is simple – you’ll save plenty of money. For example, Cloud allows companies to get rid of hardware, servers, system administrators and other expenses. Plus, with Cloud apps, the one gets backup and security solutions, as well. Cost gets cut.
According to the last researches (Spiceworks and Computer Economics), companies annual revenue is getting higher. IT budgets, though, remain flat. It can be easily explained: they want to keep the cost low.
37% of IT expenses is going to allocate on the hardware. Surprisingly, desktops still have the first stage, since 21% of hardware budget is dedicated to them, comparing with 16% for laptops. Then go servers with 19%. 10% is to be spent on networking. And external storage and mobile gadgets equally have 6%.
Interestingly, the main reason for hardware purchase is end of life (67% of responses). It is followed by growth and additional needs, updates and refresh cycles, end-user need, project need, budget availability and finished by new technology features.
Furthermore, Internet of Things is to develop further. It is the man basis of predictions that companies with developed data-sharing processes will be on top. In such a way, IT department can gain profit for the company. IoT is a way of making management and operational process more convenient, as well. One little disadvantage of IoT deployment is its high cost that will quickly pay off.
Modern gadgets are getting equipped with sensor more and more often. This allows them to provide actual data daily that, in its turn, makes gathering and processing info easier. If a company can arrange the way of dealing with this data and create its own method, it will be more competitive on market. In such a way, gadgets can become the part of strategy, as well.
To sum up, it is worth mentioning that, although, companies’ revenue is getting higher, IT budgets are not going to be changed. As a result, CIOs have to dedicate more time to wise money distribution. Hardware expenses are currently prioritized.
Alexandra works for Glorium Technologies as Internet marketeer. She keeps up with the latest IT trends and is eager to share. If you have any questions
