March 10, 2005

More than 57 percent of Chief Information Officers have a very strong assessment of the health of their B2B businesses, and forty-five percent of them think they could outspend their IT budgets, or even get additional funding this year.

That's according to the Forrester survey of CIO confidence for Q1 2005. Forrester noted that CIOs expressed greater confidence in the last two quarters of 2004, but noted that IT prospects are still robust. For example, only a quarter of CIOs believed they would outspend their 2004 budgets as of Q1 2004.

There are always current drivers of IT spending, and recently compliance is in everyone's purview (and wallet). Sixty-two percent of CIOs said that a compliance and risk management initiative was underway in their enterprises; of that number, 59 percent have either set up or are going to be setting up a risk management and compliance framework within the IT organization.

While IT spending does have its peaks and valleys, there is ample reason for the industry as a whole to feel secure. Recent search has identified the source of recent U.S. productivity gains as lying within IT adoption. On this level, then, there is reason to believe that most U.S. enterprises have a strategic commitment to IT that will continue to guarantee ample spending.

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