Cloud and connectivity top UK IT spending charts during pandemic

New research from Computing Delta reveals how organisations are intending to spend their IT budgets during the COVID-19 crisis, with most staff continuing to work remotely

As the global pandemic continues, with the ending of restrictions still uncertain, UK-based organisations are largely spending their IT budgets on tools and services to further enable remote working.

According to the latest research from award-winning market intelligence service Delta, Cloud IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service), and connectivity, including WAN (Wide Area Networks) and networking technologies, top spending plans.

Sixteen per cent of respondents expressed an intention to purchase IaaS and PaaS technologies, with ten per cent said that networking technologies were their priority.

Business continuity and disaster recovery were not far behind, with eight per cent of respondents, just ahead of end user compute and security software with seven per cent each.

There proved to be a wide range of budgets for these projects, reflecting both the scaling possibilities within these technologies, and the range of organisations surveyed. Budgets ranged from £15,000 to £20 million at the top end.

Timescales also differed vastly between organisations, with 30 per cent of respondents expecting the project to take three to six months, 29 per cent expecting it to take six to nine months and 20 per cent suggesting that it would take 12 to 18 months.

Smaller proportions anticipated even lengthier programmes with 11 per cent expecting full implementation to take 18 to 36 months, and two per cent stating it would take over 36 months, suggesting that numerous other projects and facilities are wrapped up in the same programme.

When asked which department would be responsible for the new project, IT came out overwhelmingly on top, ahead of all line of business units. In total, IT are responsible for 64 per cent of new projects, with finance the next department most likely to be in charge at five per cent.

Respondents admitted to a broad range of risks to the delivery of these projects, with timescale just ahead of the rest at 40 per cent. Integration and budgetary issues were the next highest risks at 36 per cent each.

Other risks were lower down the chain, with lack of necessary skills at 27 per cent, security at 21 per cent, and user adoption at 19 per cent.

There proved to be a wide variety of ways in which organisations choose their suppliers, according to respondents. 41 per cent said that they have a policy of sticking with existing suppliers where possible, with the same number saying they look to see what other organisations are using, often involving attending industry virtual events like Deskflix.

34 per cent use market intelligence services like Delta in their supplier selection process, which turned out to be just ahead, in terms of popularity, of those who use consultants, at 31 per cent. 25 per cent said that they use industry frameworks, with many of these organisations in the public sector.

The research was conducted in July 2020 with over 200 senior IT decision makers at medium to large UK-based enterprises.