Half of companies expect to boost IT spend in 2021

Almost half (49 percent) of companies globally expect to increase IT spending in 2021, while 19 percent expect to keep it the same and 32 percent expect it to decrease, according to a new report from Flexera.

The pandemic has had an effect too, with 57 percent saying they increased spend to-date for SaaS due to COVID, and 49 percent saying they increased public cloud spend, while 36 percent decreased spend on on-premises software.

"Enterprises are under enormous pressure to increase innovation and reduce IT spend," says Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Flexera. "In chasing innovation we continue to see a significant, some would say unsustainable increase in cloud spending. However, cloud isn't the end game itself nor is it even close to the entire story. We expect the ability to both see and manage the entirety of IT spending -- across cloud, on-prem and SaaS -- as a strategic imperative for any enterprise spending 10s of millions or more on IT. Only after companies gain this visibility can they map this spend back to business services and ultimately to business outcomes."

Among other findings, cloud spend now represents 30 percent (20 percent IaaS/PaaS and 10 percent SaaS), up from a total of 25 percent in 2020. On-premises software spending is up too though to 24 percent of IT spend from 22 percent in 2020. A total of 73 percent say they will increase spend on automation and 64 percent on AI/Machine Learning.

27 percent say they will 'reduce significantly' the number of data centers they have in 2021, while seven percent plan to eliminate data centers completely. A total of 14 percent say they would increase somewhat (11 percent) or significantly increase (three percent) the number of data centers.

When looking at vendors Microsoft remains in top spot for 47 percent of respondents. AWS is the largest vendor for 22 percent, and Oracle, SAP and IBM/RedHat follow, each reported as the largest vendor for six percent of respondents.

The full report is available on the Flexera site and you can sign up for a webinar to discuss the results to be held on January 20 at 10am CT.

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