IT budgets - News, Features, and Slideshows

Technology budgets across Australian corporate and government organisations will grow by around 2.1 per cent in 2020 compared to this year, according to preliminary Gartner figures.

CIOs really want to knuckle down into digital, big data and analytics, but their tight budgets make it difficult to do so, a new Deloitte survey has found.

With budgets tightening for many CIOs, continuing to spend large amounts of money on software support and maintenance is not something to be taken lightly. The Australian CIO of environmental services company Veolia, Brett Stapleton, says he was reluctant to sink “millions” into an SAP upgrade and ongoing support for the platform.

The increasing availability of commercial cloud service offerings, combined with emerging hybrid cloud models, will challenge the value proposition of shared-service organisations.

Companies are still concerned about the economy, but that hasn't stopped them from funneling more of their revenue to the IT department, according to the latest survey data from the Society for Information Management (SIM).

Let's face it: Your department is a cost center without a revenue stream to offset your cost structure. Hence, you are totally reliant on the revenue-producing units within the company to pay your way.

Lately, much of the furor encircling ERP costs has revolved around software maintenance and support fees. The global recession has forced customers of Big ERP vendors-SAP, Oracle, Lawson, Infor-to question the value they receive from the fees.

CIOs are from Venus. CFOs are from Mars. And nowhere is this more obvious than at budget time.

As is the case with selling McMansions, Mercedes SUVs and 63-inch HDTVs, pushing expensive technology products and services during a global recession isn't an enviable task. Late last year, when the economic meltdown began and corporate IT budgets went under the CFO's knife, tech vendors had to hastily reevaluate their marketing messages and overhaul their sales tactics.

Enterprises facing tight IT budgets should not be looking at cost-cutting but should focus on working their under-used enterprise applications harder.