Channel benefiting as IT budgets begin to grow
Survey supports claims of rising IT spending in UK
The channel has backed up research predicting UK IT budgets will increase in the next 12 months.
IDC's UK IT Decision Makers Survey 1Q04 questioned 100 IT budget holders.
Forty-two per cent claimed IT budgets will increase in the next year, as worries over the economy ease.
Respondents said their priorities were security, web services and applications such as CRM and business analytics.
"PC, software and server replacement will see the greatest increase," said Elsa Opitz, research analyst at IDC.
The survey found 63 per cent of firms plan to replace PCs and 43 per cent intend to replace servers in the next 12 months. Security spending was a medium or high priority for 81 per cent, and 55 per cent saw it as a top concern.
A third of SMEs see web services as a high spending priority, with 46 per cent of medium and 42 per cent of large firms considering them of high importance.
Opitz said: "Sixty-four per cent of those surveyed are confident they will increase their IT budget over the next 12 months, and the majority will spend it in the second half of the year."
Matt Sanderson, general manager for hardware at distributor Ingram Micro, agreed. "The trends we've been picking up also seem to (show a buoyant market)," he said.
"Security, PC upgrades and CRM do seem to be doing well, and we've seen a lot of business at the back end of the year. Anti-virus is also growing, which is high-margin."
While warning to beware of over-optimism about economic recovery, Jamie Pearce, business development director at distributor Sphinx, said business was increasing.
"Our business grew last year by 30 per cent overall. Within that, security revenue also grew and was a bigger percentage of overall business. We're trading with about 100 security resellers that are new to Sphinx," he said.
Pearce added that because sales are "going so well", the distributor is holding a 'meet the vendor' event next week for 90 of its reseller partners.