How Does Everybody Else Spend Their IT Dollars?

How do others spend their IT budget? And how does your IT organization stack up?

Every year, Gartner performs a global analysis of IT spending trends. Key findings from this year's Gartner IT Key Metrics report are:

• 55% of global IT budgets are spent on infrastructure and operations
• 33% of global IT budgets are spent on applications
• 12% of global IT budgets are spent on IT overhead

This chart illustrates regional IT spending trends. In today’s world of economic uncertainty, IT is increasingly used as a competitive differentiator. But how you spend your IT dollars is key to enabling that differentiation.

Are you an enabler of competitive advantage or is your IT organization destined to remain just a cost center?

Complete a short survey to receive a free IT Key Metrics Report from Gartner.

Contact benchmarkinginfo@gartner.com to find out more about Gartner IT Key Metrics.

Is Your IT Security Budget Immature?

With IT security breaches dominating the headlines, chief information security officers (CISOs) are asking, "Is my IT environment at risk?" Have we effectively tried to improve IT security maturity levels to mitigate risk?

Cybersecurity has become the global dilemma related to all things IT in the last few months. Key findings from the Gartner IT Key Metrics Data report specific to IT security spending patterns are:

• IT security spending ranges between 2% to 7% of total IT budget, with a modest increase, on average, to 5.6% of total IT spending.
• Network security spending continues to be the dominant category in the overall IT security budget.

Gartner ITScore data from 2011 and 2012 suggests that information security programs have not matured over the past 12 months.

Key highlights include:

• Overall, IT security maturity remains flat at 2.92%, with little variability year-over-year or between disciplines.
• Planning and budgeting remains more mature than the other disciplines, at 3.17%.
• Threat and vulnerability management is still the least-mature discipline, at 2.75%.

The chart illustrates average IT spending and budget trends over the past four years and highlights that spending appears to be constrained to within a small range in the past four years. Whether it's an application, IT modernization, disruptive technology, infrastructure and operations, or program management project, data protection must play a key role in secure architectures.

Are you using fact-based decisions to assist your IT investments, planning and assumptions?

Complete a short survey on your organization and receive a free IT Security Spending and Staffing Metrics Report from Gartner.

Contact benchmarkinginfo@gartner.com to find out more about Gartner IT Key Metrics.

Big Data Fattens Data Center Budgets

How much is big data increasing your data center budget? Is your spending keeping pace with your peers?

Every year, Gartner performs a global analysis of IT spending and staffing trends from leading organizations around the world. Key findings from this year’s Gartner IT Key Metrics report are:

• Data center spending now accounts for 22% of a typical IT budget, up from 20% in 2010.
• Data center spending as a percentage of the total IT budget continues to increase year over year.
• Data center spending is becoming more prominent – it's the largest contributor to an IT budget.

Do you understand why data center spending is growing? Is it because your absolute cost to operate a data center is increasing due to storage growth from big data demands?

Or is it because you have optimized costs in other IT domains, leaving the data center as a more significant part of your IT budget?

This chart illustrates data center spending trends. In today's world of economic uncertainty, IT is increasingly used as a competitive differentiator. But where you spend your IT budget, and how you make decisions, is key to enabling that differentiation.

Are you using fact-based decisions to assist your IT investments, planning and assumptions?

Complete a short survey to receive a free IT Spending and Staffing Metrics Report from Gartner. You can also and download a complimentary IT Metrics summary report.

Contact benchmarkinginfo@gartner.com to find out more about Gartner IT Key Metrics.