IT Budgets Going to Current Operations in 2010

Instead of purchasing new software, more than half of nearly 2,200 IT executives and technology decision-makers from Forrester's Business Data Services survey say they will be spending IT budgets on the operation and maintenance of existing applications in 2010. The fastest-growing small to midsized software markets will be customer relationship management or information and knowledge management, more than 20% of all small- and medium-size businesses (SMB) have concrete plans to implement these in 2010 or later.

According to Forrester’s findings, the poor economic environment created a backlog of business application software upgrade activities for firms, and many plan to address the issue this year. Forty-one percent of enterprises and 21% of SMBs plan to upgrade existing finance and accounting software, 48% of enterprises and 19 percent of SMBs plan to upgrade their CRM applications, and 52% of enterprises and 18% of SMBs plan to upgrade industry-specific software.

"As long as businesses are prioritizing cost cutting and efficiency improvements, tech vendors must provide clearer business justifications for their offerings and demonstrate the functional fit with business requirements that their solutions provide," said Forrester Senior Analyst Holger Kisker, Ph.D. in a statement.

This story was reprinted with permission from Information Management.