Where Your IT Dollars Are Headed In 2017

We polled InformationWeek readers to find out about your IT spending priorities for 2017. Here's what you told us.

Susan Nunziata, Editorial Director

November 10, 2016

2 Min Read
<p align="left">(Source: InformationWeek Flash Poll, conducted Oct. 2, 2016 - Nov. 9, 2016)</p>

Gartner's 10 Tech Predictions That Will Change IT

Gartner's 10 Tech Predictions That Will Change IT


Gartner's 10 Tech Predictions That Will Change IT (Click image for larger view and slideshow.)

We asked readers of InformationWeek to tell us about IT spending priorities for 2017. Our flash poll, conducted October 2 to November 9, 2016, revealed that cloud is far and away your biggest spending priority for the year ahead.

The poll -- which was conducted on the InformationWeek website and via email newsletters -- received 351 responses. While the results are not intended to be scientific, they offer a good snapshot of what IT professionals are focused on.

More than a third of respondents (36%) cited cloud as the technology that will receive the greatest investment at their companies in 2017.

Nearly one fifth of respondents cited data management as their top area of investment, while 13% cited infrastructure.

The responses align with IDC's predictions that IT spending on cloud infrastructure -- servers, enterprise storage, and Ethernet switches for the enterprise private cloud and colocation services -- will increase by 15.5% in 2016 to reach $37.1 billion.

[Which IT staff jobs pay the most? Read InformationWeek 2016 Salary Survey: 10 Best-Paying IT Jobs.]

The long-term IDC forecast sees spending on IT infrastructure for cloud environments growing at a 13.1% compound annual growth rate, which will result in a total spend of $59.5 billion in 2020, or 48.7% of the total spending on enterprise IT infrastructure.

Overall, IDC predicted information technology spending worldwide will hit $2.7 trillion by 2020, led by the financial services, manufacturing, and healthcare sectors.

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According to Gartner, global IT spending is slated to rise slightly in 2017, with enterprises looking to invest about $3.5 trillion on technology in the next year -- an increase of 2.9% compared to the estimated figure for 2016, according to Gartner.

Business intelligence (BI), analytics, cloud services, digital market management, and security are among the top technology areas identified as spending priorities by respondents to the Gartner 2017 CIO Agenda survey.

What are your IT spending priorities for 2017? How do they stack up to the findings in our flash poll? Tell us all about it in the comments section below.

About the Author

Susan Nunziata

Editorial Director

Susan Nunziata leads the site's content team and contributors to guide topics, direct strategies, and pursue new ideas, all in the interest of sharing practicable insights with our community.
Nunziata was most recently Director of Editorial for EnterpriseEfficiency.com, a UBM Tech community. Prior to joining UBM Tech, Nunziata was Editorial Director for the Ziff Davis Enterprise portfolio of Websites, which includes eWEEK, Baseline, and CIO Insight. From 2010-2012, she also served as Editor in Chief of CIO Insight. Prior to joining Ziff Davis Enterprise, she served as Editor in Chief of Mobile Enterprise from 2007 to 2010. A frequent public speaker, Nunziata has entertained audiences with compelling topics such as "Enterprise Mobility" and "The Multigenerational Workforce." She even managed to snag invitations to speak at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium – not once, but twice (and those folks are smart). In a past life, she worked as a lead editor for entertainment and marketing publications, including Billboard, Music Business International, and Entertainment Marketing Letter.A native New Yorker, in August 2011 Nunziata inexplicably picked up stakes and relocated to the only place in the country with a higher cost of living: The San Francisco Bay Area. A telecommuter, her office mates are two dogs and two extremely well fed cats. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from St. John's University in Jamaica, N.Y. (and she doesn't even watch basketball).

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