Biggest Driver for SMB IT Budget Increases in 2021 Was IT Infrastructure

In the small business sector, companies were forced to invest heavily into their IT infrastructure as they had no other choice but to have their employees shift to working from home and gain access to work remotely, migrated to the cloud, and bolstered their security. In an effort to assist employees who were new to the remote landscape with remaining productive, resilient, and dedicated to not only completing their work, but doing a good job, IT departments activated essential technologies that could be used to empower the remote work landscape.

A shaky and uncertain economy was yet another issue that had to be contended with, as were interruptions that took systems that were well-established by surprise. This prompted a lot of companies to reassess their budgets and scale back on expenses that they deemed non-essential – which, in many cases, included technology expenditures.

In order to acquire greater visibility into the legacy of these dynamic changes as business owners modified their operations and prepared for totally new market dynamics, Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) surveyed more than 1,000 tech buyers in companies located throughout Europe and North America in order to assess the information technology landscape. The findings of this survey were quite revealing.

Challenges Are Expected to Continue 

The findings of the analysis that was performed by SWZD determined that may business owners expected the hardships that were unexpectedly thrust upon them and that they had no choice but to adjust to continue into 2022. Regardless of the obstacles that companies perceived, however, the annual study, which keeps tabs on trends over several years, revealed that businesses have a positive outlook about the future. They’re also more likely to invest in technology now than they were just two years ago.

Key Insights

The following is a rundown of the key insights that were revealed:

• 61 percent of businesses expected that their revenues would increase in 2022, while just 8 percent project a decrease in their revenues.
• The growth of IT budgeting accelerated, with the majority of business owners planning to boost their budgets for technology expenditures, or to keep their budgets the same year-over-year.
• The share of information technology budgets that will be allocated to cloud computing and managed services will increase year-over-year, taking shares away from both software and hardware.
• Companies will rejuvenate their budgets on futuristic technologies. Emerging technology adoption plans, particularly for newer security solutions, experienced a marked increase year-over-year.
• In 2022, technology buying challenges will continue, with more than 40 percent of companies expecting shortages, price increases, shipping issues, and logistical problems.
• About ¼ of information technology professionals intend on looking for or changing jobs in 2022, and among those who are seeking new jobs, about 86 percent will take remote positions into consideration.

In 2021’s state of IT, 64 percent of businesses enabled a remote workforce were recorded. A more recent analysis found that future remote work found that 55 percent of companies boosted tech spending in order to address the needs that were created by a global crisis.