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    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013

    TEKsystems®, a leading provider of IT staffing solutions, IT talent management expertise and IT services, recently released new research showing that IT leaders are almost evenly split on expectations regarding budget increases for 2013. Additionally, IT leaders are gravitating toward investing in core application and infrastructure services and staff, with a greater interest in permanent hiring. Finally, the vast majority of organizations have no concern regarding loss of skills as it relates to baby boomer retirement.

    More than 600 IT leaders (CIOs, IT VPs, IT directors, IT managers) were polled in September 2012 to understand the current state of IT spending, skills needs and workforce issues to identify critical areas. The full results of the survey, a video and infographic are available from TEKsystems.

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 1

    Click through for results from a survey on expected IT spending in 2013, conducted by TEKsystems.

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 2

    IT leaders are nearly evenly split on whether IT budgets will grow versus remaining the same or declining. Forty-eight percent expect an increase in their organization’s IT budget, while 52 percent expect it to remain the same (27 percent), decline (16 percent) or didn’t know (9 percent).

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 3

    IT leaders’ confidence in whether their budgets will support the business needs of the organization closely mirror spending expectations. Fifty-four percent are confident that budgets will be adequate, while 46 percent are neutral (25 percent), unconfident (16 percent) or didn’t know (5 percent).

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 4

    IT leaders still see budget as their greatest challenge. In ranking the top challenges, “acquiring necessary budgets” ranked first, followed by “attracting, retaining and developing top talent” and “improving IT performance/efficiency.”

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 5

    Application and infrastructure services spending top the list. When asked which areas IT leaders expected spending to increase, 49 percent expected growth in IT applications services spending and 47 percent expected growth in IT infrastructure services spending.

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 6

    Outsourcing and education services spending lose momentum. Sixty-nine percent of IT leaders expected spending for outsourcing services to stay the same (39 percent), decline (20 percent) or didn’t know (10 percent). For IT education and training, 70 percent expected it to stay the same (44 percent), decline (17 percent) or didn’t know (9 percent).

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 7

    Top three impact areas include newer trends such as business intelligence and cloud computing, yet security still remains high. Business intelligence, cloud computing and security were the top three trends expected to have the largest organizational impact. Additionally, more than 58 percent of IT leaders expected the trend towards cloud-based and “as-a-service” offerings to drive an increase in demand for IT skills, while less than 15 percent expected it to decrease.

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 8

    Operations a top concern. IT leaders ranked “operations” as having the largest increase in IT needs, followed by “marketing/sales” and “finance/accounting.”

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 9

    IT leaders slightly positive towards salary increases. In terms of compensation, 55 percent of IT leaders expect their IT staff’s salary to increase, while 44 percent expect it to remain the same (34 percent), decrease (4 percent) or didn’t know (7 percent).

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 10

    “Core skills” expect to see highest salary increases. When asked which IT staff salaries were expected to change, more than 40 percent of IT leaders expected salary increases for developers, engineers, project managers and security experts. More than 30 percent of IT leaders expected salary increases for business analysts, architects, analytic experts, cloud experts, help-desk and support, mobile and .NET technologies. Mirroring the expected salary changes, developers, architects and analytics experts ranked highest in difficulty of obtaining. Surprisingly, social media skills saw the lowest expectation of positive salary growth with less than 30 percent expecting an increase.

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 11

    Organizations expect an increase in permanent headcount over other hiring models. For those IT leaders that are expecting to increase headcount, 39 percent expect to increase permanent IT headcount and 36 percent expect an increase in temporary headcount, while only 16 percent expect an increase in part-time headcount.

    Looking Ahead at IT Spending Expectations in 2013 - slide 12

    Organizations don’t seem concerned with the loss of skills based on Baby Boomer retirement. Just slightly more than one-quarter (27 percent) of IT leaders foresee the loss of skills due to Baby Boomer retirement as a problem for their organization. Sixty-three percent felt it would not cause an issue, while 10 percent had no opinion. Additionally, of the 27 percent of respondents who did see Baby Boomer retirement as a problem, only 15 percent had any retention programs to encourage Baby Boomers to postpone retirement.

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