UK enterprise IT budgets to shrink by 6.9 per cent in 2011

But Gartner survey finds that CIOs globally are focusing more on growth and consolidation than cost cutting

CIOs are shifting their focus away from cutting costs and towards efficiency, consolidation and using IT to grow the business, according to Dave Aron, vice-president and research director at Gartner.

Aron said this was one of the main findings of Gartner's 2011 CIO Agenda Survey, entitled Reimagining IT. The survey recorded the repsonses of 2,014 CIOs, including 641 from EMEA, with an average annual IT budget of £80m.

Although many respondents mentioned a renewed focus on growth, budgets are still tight, up by a paltry one per cent on average across the board, but with the UK preparing for another difficult year with budgets set to decrease by 6.9 per cent on average. This compares with a decrease in Germany of 2.7 per cent and a slight increase in France of 0.2 per cent. The so-called Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) all expect growth.

"The emphasis on growth, albeit combined with efficiency and consolidation, is in contrast to that of the last few years when CIOs were all talking about cost cutting," said Aron.

Unsurprisingly, cloud computing and virtualisation were high on the CIO agenda. Just three per cent said that the majority of their IT was currently in the cloud, but 43 per cent said that they expected this to be the case within four years.

Aron said that that reluctance to make big changes within the IT department was a problem: "There remains a powerful yet inappropriate conservatism in some places with regard to the big ideas, and some CIOs remain focused on incremental changes. This might leave them in an uncompetitive position with regard to price performance."

Another point made by many CIOs was that digitisation and automation of processes outside of the back office remains low, meaning that most are still not using technology to work with partners and engage with customers.

The survey also found that interaction between IT and business units lacks focus. "CIOs should be looking to get involved in audits and reviews to try and get an insight into the more specific needs of the business," Aron said. "This means collaborating with other departments to work out which areas IT can enable."

Finally, the survey highlighted a potential IT skills time bomb due to a lack of investment in training. Mentoring, career development, job rotations and external training were all low on the CIO agenda, with many using contractors and outsourcers to fill the skills gaps within their own organisations.