The 2023 State of IT annual report, compiled by Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD), notes that more than half (51%) of the 1,400 respondents in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America plan to take precautionary measures to prepare for an economic slowdown this year by increasing their tech spend. This compares to just 6% who anticipate cutting their investment in IT.

The SWZD report states that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, “technology has proven to be a worthwhile investment. Even facing a likely recession, businesses no longer see technology as a cost centre. Rather, IT has become an enabler that’s critical to success. As businesses look to maximise efficiently during an economic slowdown, technology will help companies do more with less.”

The question, however, is where all that increased IT spend should be directed.

Reasons provided by SWZD respondents for boosting their IT budgets include the need to update outdated infrastructure, rising security concerns and increased priority on IT projects largely for operational and productivity reasons. 

Denis Bensch, CIO of FlowCentric Technologies, concurs and points to five key indicators that systems are reaching the end of the road.

1. Security vulnerability – outdated systems are largely unsupported by vendors, opening a window for potential hacks, malware infiltration and security breaches.
2. Software incompatibility – legacy systems that don’t allow for integration or scalability, being unable to upgrade these systems or the supporting operating systems for fear of the application failing.
3. Compliance issues – being forced to entrust critical and sensitive customer data to insecure applications thus running the risk of breaching privacy and other compliance requirements.
4. High operating costs – facing mounting costs for simply maintaining the system and fixing bugs.
5. Application failure – poor performance, decreasing reliability, increasing downtime are all indications of looming total application failure.

However, Bensch maintains that in today’s economic climate, rather than ripping and replacing their ageing systems, companies could be best served by optimising their existing investments in technology in ways that increase productivity. Read On: