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By Mark Henricks
IT professionals can expect more work to do but no more hands to do it. That’s the bottom line of a just-released study of six-month plans for IT hiring and spending conducted in March for technology retailer CDW.
The most recent CDW IT Monitor found that 47 percent of 1,050 IT decision-makers planned to implement discretionary IT projects in the next six months. However, just 22 percent expected to add IT staff over that period.
Overall hiring plans as measured by the bi-monthly survey haven’t changed significantly since December. The number of decision-makers planning to spend on new hardware and software, on the other hand, was up 3 percent from CDW’s February report.
Thomas Richards, president and chief operating officer of the $7.6 billion-in-sales Vernon Hills, Ill. company, sounded cautiously optimistic that a hiring increase would follow. “We are hopeful that slowly but surely, IT departments will be looking to re-staff as 2010 progresses and IT decision-makers feel even more confident about the extent of the recovery,” he said.
The spending uptick was especially marked at medium-sized businesses, employing from 100 to 999 people. Almost three out of five (59 percent) IT decision-makers at these businesses said they’d spend more on IT, up 5 percent from February’s survey. The increase means medium-size companies now anticipate IT investment increases similar to those at larger businesses.
Hiring plans were particularly dismal in the small-business segment, from 1 to 99 employees. Just 6 percent of these businesses said they planned to add staff over the next six months, down 4 percentage points since the last survey in February.
State and local government IT leaders reversed a yearlong trend of negative outlooks by recording a high reading of 66, according to the CDW IT Monitor. States represented most of the gain. Among that group, 85 percent of decision-makers plan to replace or install new software in the next six months, up a robust 18 percentage points from February. Eighty-one percent of the same group anticipates replacing or installing new hardware, a 17 percentage point increase. At small businesses, 19 percent expected IT spending to increase, up from 15 percent.
Government interest in new IT initiatives was mixed. Local governments planning new IT initiatives fell from 36 percent to 40 percent. State government IT initiatives were up from 39 percent to 46 percent, while federal government initiatives dropped from 60 percent to 48 percent.
Overall, the CDW IT Monitor index score measuring all sizes and levels of business and government held steady at 72 for the third consecutive reading. CDW interpreted this result as meaning medium-size businesses and state and local government organizations were beginning to catch up with large business and federal government agencies.
The CDW IT Monitor has been conducted every two months since 2007 by Richard Day Research. The index registered 69 when first calculated in December 2007, meaning it has improved only slightly over the last two years-plus.
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