A new survey claims the average IT budget among big Irish businesses will reach nearly €1m this year, despite economic uncertainty.
Larger businesses in Ireland are focusing more on IT investment, with AI and cloud infrastructure at the top of the priority list, according to a new survey by IT service provider Auxilion.
The survey claims business leaders in Ireland expect to invest an average of nearly €1m on IT this year, an increase of nearly 25pc compared to the average IT investment in 2022.
To get these figures, the survey – conducted by Censuswide – took results from 100 C-suite executives in companies with more than 250 employees.
The main investment areas for these companies are AI, cloud infrastructure and IT service desk upgrades, based on the survey responses.
Experts have been discussing how 2023 might be the year of the cloud. In March, Noledge group CEO Ray Ryan said businesses were forced to adapt during the Covid-19 pandemic and now cloud is changing the business world.
AI has also become a hot topic this year with the rise of products such as ChatGPT. The success of this model has prompted businesses of all sizes to incorporate AI into their products and services.
Modernising the workplace
Meanwhile, 22pc of business leaders in the survey are prioritising IT spending in hybrid working, green technologies, robotic automation and collaboration platforms.
Despite the increase in planned IT spending, the survey claims nearly half of the respondents are hesitant around increased investment, due to the uncertainty of the global economy.
Auxilion CEO Philip Maguire said it is “understandable” that some leaders would start 2023 hesitant with their budgets, due to the challenging past few years.
“However, it’s positive to see that organisations are planning to invest more in IT and are open to implementing new technologies to shape the modern workplace,” Maguire said.
Maguire also said businesses have been looking to modernise their operations, through managed services that bring “greater automation and creat[e] more self-sufficiency”.
“This will see operations streamlined, people supported and businesses grow,” Maguire said. “It will also support innovation and sustainability, which are crucial for the modern business leader.”
The leading goals of transforming the workplace were to increasing productivity, drive business growth and improve sustainability.
This survey on larger Irish businesses differs from an earlier report on Irish SMEs, which suggested smaller companies are cutting certain IT budgets.
A Typetec survey released in January found that the average cybersecurity budget for SMEs is expected to drop by more than 50pc this year, despite a high number of these companies experiencing a cyberattack in the previous 12 months.
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