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Over 80% of Business Leaders Feel Optimistic About the Economy, Forecast Larger IT Budgets in 2024

Matt Cloke
Endava

The past few years have presented numerous challenges for businesses: a pandemic, rising interest rates, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical conflict that sent shockwaves across the global economy. But change may finally be on the horizon. According to a recent report by Endava surveying nearly 1,000 organizational leaders and decision makers across North America and Western Europe, a majority of executives confirmed they are feeling optimistic about the current business climate, and as a result, are forecasting larger IT budgets, increased technology funding and rollout, and prioritized innovation in the coming year.

Image removed.

The report findings point to the importance of focusing on results over hype in today's business climate, as lasting success in business demands a holistic approach, not just one revolutionary idea. And while it's essential for leaders to keep a pulse on emerging trends, it's just as critical to adapt to the ever-changing markets. With today's uncertainties and the quickly evolving technology landscape, innovation, transformation, and optimization are always on the agenda, with technology playing a pivotal role in continuous problem-solving and adaptation.

Technology acceleration is a practice that blends innovative technology with leading methods; leveraging smaller projects that focus on optimization over transformation, while emphasizing composable architectures and iterative engagements. Through this research, Endava aims to provide perspective on the trends and technologies that are contributing to the emergence of technology acceleration, and the role that technology partnerships play in the rollout of this practice.

Other key insights from Endava's Tech Acceleration report include:

A boost to IT budgets

Nearly 75% of the organizations surveyed forecast a yearly IT budget increase, opening up more resources to hire additional staff, explore new markets, and make strategic investments that enable growth and innovation.

Artificial intelligence, big data, and predictive analytics as top priorities

Artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and predictive analytics ranked as top priorities for organizations included in the study. Over 50% of organizations prioritized AI very highly and just 2% said it wasn't a priority at all. Close to 40% prioritized big data and predictive analytics very highly.

When looking at individual technologies, artificial intelligence rose up as the undisputed champion. Nearly 80% of those surveyed regarded it as either a “high” or “very high priority” technology. Currently, interest in AI is exceptionally high, with Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT dominating technology discussions globally.

5G on the rise, again

5G has been a technology that for some time has struggled to take off. Survey findings suggest that interest in 5G is growing again, particularly in Telecom and Mobility. This aligns with a growing consensus of analysts that predict 5G will be a major element of society in the years to come, acting as the backbone across smart cities, connected factories and automotive, and immersive customer experiences.

Innovation over stability

Over half of the respondents (56%) plan to invest in innovation rather than operational stability. More dollars for technology mean that companies can hire additional staff, explore new markets and make strategic investments. When making such IT investments, organizations must balance pursuing operational stability with innovation that will set them apart from their competitors.

Composable architecture

A comparison between Endava's Emerging Tech Unpacked report and this study revealed that awareness of composable architecture and its application to business may be growing. Previous data showed that many organizations lacked a strategy regarding composability and were unfamiliar with it entirely, while data from this study shows that nearly 60% of respondent organizations are prioritizing it highly.

Organizations applying tech acceleration principles often rely on composability, artificial intelligence, big data, 5G, predictive analytics, microservices, and digital ecosystems. But it's critical to remember that technology acceleration encompasses both strategic and technological elements, so organizations looking to apply a similar framework and stay ahead of the competition must adjust more than just their software and hardware to see success, they must also adjust their thinking for the long haul.

Matt Cloke is Chief Technology Officer at Endava

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Over 80% of Business Leaders Feel Optimistic About the Economy, Forecast Larger IT Budgets in 2024

Matt Cloke
Endava

The past few years have presented numerous challenges for businesses: a pandemic, rising interest rates, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical conflict that sent shockwaves across the global economy. But change may finally be on the horizon. According to a recent report by Endava surveying nearly 1,000 organizational leaders and decision makers across North America and Western Europe, a majority of executives confirmed they are feeling optimistic about the current business climate, and as a result, are forecasting larger IT budgets, increased technology funding and rollout, and prioritized innovation in the coming year.

Image removed.

The report findings point to the importance of focusing on results over hype in today's business climate, as lasting success in business demands a holistic approach, not just one revolutionary idea. And while it's essential for leaders to keep a pulse on emerging trends, it's just as critical to adapt to the ever-changing markets. With today's uncertainties and the quickly evolving technology landscape, innovation, transformation, and optimization are always on the agenda, with technology playing a pivotal role in continuous problem-solving and adaptation.

Technology acceleration is a practice that blends innovative technology with leading methods; leveraging smaller projects that focus on optimization over transformation, while emphasizing composable architectures and iterative engagements. Through this research, Endava aims to provide perspective on the trends and technologies that are contributing to the emergence of technology acceleration, and the role that technology partnerships play in the rollout of this practice.

Other key insights from Endava's Tech Acceleration report include:

A boost to IT budgets

Nearly 75% of the organizations surveyed forecast a yearly IT budget increase, opening up more resources to hire additional staff, explore new markets, and make strategic investments that enable growth and innovation.

Artificial intelligence, big data, and predictive analytics as top priorities

Artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and predictive analytics ranked as top priorities for organizations included in the study. Over 50% of organizations prioritized AI very highly and just 2% said it wasn't a priority at all. Close to 40% prioritized big data and predictive analytics very highly.

When looking at individual technologies, artificial intelligence rose up as the undisputed champion. Nearly 80% of those surveyed regarded it as either a “high” or “very high priority” technology. Currently, interest in AI is exceptionally high, with Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT dominating technology discussions globally.

5G on the rise, again

5G has been a technology that for some time has struggled to take off. Survey findings suggest that interest in 5G is growing again, particularly in Telecom and Mobility. This aligns with a growing consensus of analysts that predict 5G will be a major element of society in the years to come, acting as the backbone across smart cities, connected factories and automotive, and immersive customer experiences.

Innovation over stability

Over half of the respondents (56%) plan to invest in innovation rather than operational stability. More dollars for technology mean that companies can hire additional staff, explore new markets and make strategic investments. When making such IT investments, organizations must balance pursuing operational stability with innovation that will set them apart from their competitors.

Composable architecture

A comparison between Endava's Emerging Tech Unpacked report and this study revealed that awareness of composable architecture and its application to business may be growing. Previous data showed that many organizations lacked a strategy regarding composability and were unfamiliar with it entirely, while data from this study shows that nearly 60% of respondent organizations are prioritizing it highly.

Organizations applying tech acceleration principles often rely on composability, artificial intelligence, big data, 5G, predictive analytics, microservices, and digital ecosystems. But it's critical to remember that technology acceleration encompasses both strategic and technological elements, so organizations looking to apply a similar framework and stay ahead of the competition must adjust more than just their software and hardware to see success, they must also adjust their thinking for the long haul.

Matt Cloke is Chief Technology Officer at Endava

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...