DATA Inc. 'IT Decision 2013' Survey: IT Spending Increased In 2013; Strong Outlook for 2014

DATA Inc., an international provider of information technology software and services, announced the results of its second annual IT industry survey today. Spending in IT was up in 2013 and should continue to rise in 2014 as the pace of technology continues to drive IT investments. End Quote

New York, NY (1888PressRelease) January 09, 2014 - Spending on information technology increased in 2013, and more businesses are expected to maintain or grow that investment in 2014, according to the results of DATA Inc.'s IT Decision 2013 survey of IT professionals released today. It is DATA Inc.'s second annual survey.

In this year's survey, 81 percent of respondents indicated that their firm's IT spending increased from the previous year, a 13 percent jump over last year, when 68 percent reported an increase in IT spending. This year's survey participants were also more optimistic about the upcoming year, as 95 percent stated that IT spending would either increase, or stay the same. Last year, 88 percent felt that 2013 spending would trump 2012's budget.

"The pace of technology change hasn't slowed, and calls for a continued strong investment in information technology," said Conrad Leao, DATA Inc. Vice President of Operations. "While there's a newfound optimism among business executives in general, IT executives have held an optimistic outlook for several years, as most companies view their IT assets as a competitive differentiator."

The optimistic outlook builds off a 2013 in which more corporate IT projects were awarded than the previous year, and an 8 percent increase (to 21 percent) in projects exceeding $100M million.

DATA Inc., a globally recognized information technology software and service provider, conducted the survey from September through mid-November. It includes responses from close to 225 IT professionals in a range of positions, including CIOs, senior IT directors, project directors and programmers. Participants were surveyed on a variety of topics including IT spending, employment, and technology directions in 2013. They were also asked their perspective on expected trends in 2014.

A presentation of the results can be found online at http://bit.ly/1dvWlh1.

Application development (66 percent), and application testing/quality assurance (61 percent) were the top two areas of IT investments in 2013, and should continue to be among the top priorities in 2014, according to survey respondents. Among the areas expected to increase most substantially in 2014 are service oriented architecture (SOA) and mainframe migration/re-engineering, as they were named as a focus by 55 and 44 percent of respondents, respectively, in 2014. In 2013, just 45 percent of respondents said significant investment was made in SOA, and just 35 percent in mainframe migration, in 2013. Mobile apps will also be a priority in 2014.

"Custom application development continues to be an area of investment and interest from survey participants," said Ashis Bhisey, Vice President of Technology at DATA, Inc. "We're also seeing this among our corporate customer base as well. With an increase in computing platforms, there's an ongoing need to ensure that information can be shared across the enterprise, resulting in the need for custom applications."

Other findings from the survey:

• Corporate satisfaction with IT vendors is down. This year, just 25 percent of survey respondents stated that they were "very satisfied" with their vendors, vs. 56 percent from last year. A majority (66 percent) said they were "satisfied" with their IT service provider in 2013.
• While there's an assumption that offshoring is a part of every major project, 54 percent of project awarded or won did not involve this strategy, say respondents.
• Cost was cited as the top challenge encountered in implementing solutions (53 percent); with support and maintenance of a provided application also named.
• The trend in supplier diversity is hitting IT as 58 percent of corporate survey respondents ranked Minority / Small / Disadvantaged Business status as a strong factor in their evaluation criteria. Of course, IT vendor's experience/expertise ranked as most important, accounting for 84 percent of the responses.
• Employment among respondents was up 8 percent, to 89 percent in this year's survey, supporting the continued growth of IT budgets.

"The results of this year's survey indicate that technology is still front and center at many organizations," said Leao. "From Big Data, to cloud computing to enterprise-wide systems to "bring your own device," corporate IT departments and the IT service firms that support them will continue to be busy throughout 2014."

About DATA Inc.
Since 1983, DATA Inc. (www.datainc.biz) has provided IT Solutions to organizations on the Fortune 100 list as well as the Public Sector. Throughout the organization's 30-year history, DATA Inc. has grown into an award-winning full service IT solutions provider headquartered in Montvale, NJ with development centers and offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

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