IT Investment Trends: The Infrastructure Backlash

The enthusiasm the recession brought to cloud and virtualization technologies added to the infrastructure backlash, as organizations found that some pre-cloud, pre-virtualization technologies needed shoring up in order to function in today's environment. This explains the overspending we see in the data center, encryption authentication, and systems management and support.

Large enterprises most frequently spent more than budgeted on business intelligence and data mining applications (54 percent), mobile devices (45 percent) and wireless equipment (42 percent). In comparison, only 29 percent of midrange respondents spent more than budgeted on mobile devices. (See Figure 1.2 on page 17.)

Storage hardware remains on a steady upswing. (See Finding 2 on page 18.) That's being driven by intense continuity and upgrade needs that arise from newly virtualized (and cloudy) environments.

Amid this discussion about infrastructure's consequences, we should give pride of place to the newest technologies.

• Budgets for private clouds are expected to grow 23.5 percent in 2011, compared with 7.5 percent growth in 2010.
• Budgets for cloud services are expected to increase 19.8 percent in 2011, versus 6.4 percent in 2010. 
• Budgets for IT automation are projected to increase 15.2 percent in 2011, versus 3.3 percent in 2010.

Virtualization, while strong, did not see a significant uptick in spending from 2010 to 2011. This indicates that the virtualization market has reached a maturity level.