Most IT executives want to better align IT investments with business goals, but only about half believe they are doing it, according to a survey released Tuesday and backed by software provider CA.

CA sponsored a poll of 300 CIOs and top IT executives at companies with more than $250 million in annual revenue. Seventy-four percent of respondents said improved prioritization of IT spending based on business needs is a critical IT management goal.

Respondents in the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Japan were significantly more likely than their U.S. counterparts to consider their organizations successful in that way.

U.S. IT executives are also more likely than executives overseas to be dissatisfied with their organizations' attempts to improve service for end users, control costs, and meet other goals, CA found. However, U.S. respondents are more likely than others to be satisfied with deployment of automation and virtualization, according to the survey.

Fifty-three percent of the respondents worldwide said shortfalls in staff skills create the biggest barrier to improved alignment, but in the United Kingdom and Germany, only 40% see skills as the main obstacle. Thirty-seven percent of IT executives in those countries said technology integration is their biggest challenge.

The survey also found that respondents in the United Kingdom and Germany are significantly more likely than those in other regions to report their companies have deployed a CMDB (configuration management database).

Sixty-seven percent of respondents said standardization of policies and procedures is the most important factor for determining success of IT-business alignment.

Respondents from Australia and Japan are most likely to specifically cite best practices frameworks such as ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) as the top reason they have been able to achieve their goals, even though only 55% of them have adopted, or are planning to adopt, ITIL in the next 12 months. In the United Kingdom and Germany, 71% of respondents plan to adopt ITIL, while 50% plan to do so in the United States.

"As information technology becomes an increasingly predominant factor in the top- and bottom-line performance of the business, IT executives will have to focus more and more on the wise investment of their finite resources," Sarah Meyer, director of business service management at CA, said in a prepared statement. "This focus will continue to drive the adoption of best practices for IT resource allocation -- as well as the integrated business service management technologies that support those best practices."