Australian technology analyst firm Telsyte has released data that shows 22% of all business spending on IT is being done outside of the IT department.
According to the Telsyte Australian Digital Workplace Study 2015; Australian businesses are undergoing a new wave of disruption as a combination of new technology, remote working, online services and business unit technology spending are changing traditional IT spending and strategies.
Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Gedda explained that lines of business now have greater access to software and solutions delivered as a Service, making it easier for them to acquire the tools they need without having to engage IT.
This reflects the trend seen at blueAPACHE over recent years. Chris Marshall, Managing Director at blueAPACHE said “As the acquisition of IT becomes easier, more business units are leveraging IT as a Service (ITaaS) to rapidly deploy solutions that help them better achieve the results they are accountable for.
“Traditionally, accessing new technology involved business case analysis, vendor diligence, budgeting, impact analysis and resourcing processes that could take the IT department months or years. Today, under the ITaaS model, it takes a fraction of that time.”
The report highlighted that Australian IT departments are having to deal with more business unit IT spending with 79 per cent of organisations having at least one line of business running its own IT budget.
“This is up 5 per cent from 2014 and shows a growing demand for IT services from areas of the business like marketing. Combine this with more accessible cloud-based applications and the CIO has another information management procurement channel to deal with,” Gedda stated.
The IT investment outlook remains strong with organisations looking to increase ICT budgets by an average of 5 per cent and more than half (57%) of CIOs expect in-house IT staff numbers to increase this year.
Areas organisations are looking to increase spending most in include cloud computing, mobility, software-as-service and cloud UC and telephony.
“While operational cost savings remains the top business priority for 2015, both revenue growth and business process improvement are a higher priority than they were in 2014,” Gedda says.
The Telsyte Australian Digital Workplace Study 2015 is a comprehensive 100-page report that covers the key trends and strategies CIOs are employing to manage information and deal with social and technological change. 424 Australian CIOs and other ICT decision makers in organisations with 20 to 20,000+ employees participated in the report.
More information
For more information on Telsyte and their report, visit www.telsyte.com.au.
To learn more about ITaaS and better managing the way your organisation acquires technology, speak with the blueAPACHE account team.