Nearly 1,700 IT decision makers participated in ETR's 15th quarterly Macro Views survey covering high-level IT spend trends and organizational changes. The Macro Views report highlights data analysis from our ITDM community weighing in on IT budgets, spending priorities, hiring trends, cloud workloads, remote work, vendor-specific impact, and much, much more. Read on for some key takeaways in part one of our two-part series. This week we will focus on overall IT budget projections broken down by key demographics, such as Enterprise size, Industry, and Region. We will also take a look at key organizational patterns, such as IT deployments, hiring trends, and potential shifts in remote work models.
Let's begin with overall IT budget expectations for 2023. IT spending estimates are lower again in this survey, with budget projections for Q1, Q2, and total 2023 materially lower than respective estimates captured three months ago. Revised estimates for IT spend in calendar year 2023 stand at +3.6% y/y, down from 4.6% three months ago and the 5.6% projection captured in the back half of 2022. As illustrated below, there is more nuance to the aggregate budget growth estimate once we break down the projections demographically. Here we see that despite the aggregate revision lower in spending estimates, two respondent subsamples buck the trend, with Energy / Utilities and APAC organizations showing a small increase in their expected spend versus the prior survey levels captured in January. Compared to the data from three months ago, Small organizations had the smallest revision lower and highest overall budget growth at 6.9%, while the largest companies (represented by Global 2000 and Fortune 500 respondents) project the smallest increase at 0.9% and 0.7%, respectively.
Given the sizeable reduction in budgets ETR has captured over the last year, we also asked our ITDM community what their primary method(s) would be to achieve the projected decrease in spending with answer options ranging from reducing staffing, optimizing SaaS licensing, and reducing cloud resources, among numerous other options. To see the results, view the full report on the ETR Platform.
Next up, we review the shifts in organizational plans, an analysis that ETR has been running since the debut Macro survey launched in March of 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. That survey was designed to determine the impact that the virus might have on the enterprise technology landscape, including hiring trends, IT deployments, business travel, and remote work models. Since then, the COVID Impact survey has transitioned into the Macro survey, and below, you will see a visualization depicting the most recent iteration with data on these topics tracking back to July 2022.
Regarding these anticipated organizational changes, the most recent data set was mainly in line with prior survey levels. IT projects (whether accelerating or halting them), and hiring (and firing) trends were largely equal to three months ago. Organizations planning to cancel business trips saw the biggest move, reversing last year’s growth trend and dropping from 21% to 17% in the last three months. Although not shown in this chart, ETR also tracks wage growth among our IT community, and despite the stalled hiring trends data and massive layoffs dominating daily headlines, most organizations still anticipate wage growth for existing and new IT department hires, with 64% (down from 69%) expecting a median wage growth of 1-5% over the next six months.
Lastly, the battle between highly compensated CEOs and their employees over remote work continues to play out in headlines across the country, and with massive layoffs seemingly being used as leverage (despite no reduction in CEO compensation), more companies are revising their work model policies. Amidst the ongoing debate, ETR turns to our data where the percentages of remote and hybrid work continue to remain very stable, with 67% of respondents indicating a blend of fully remote or hybrid work vs. 33% fully in-office permanently; these numbers have shifted just one percentage point in favor of fully in-office versus three months ago. As of right now, only 28% of employees are fully in-office, and although the projections point to a slightly higher portion of fully in-office employees on a permanent basis, the magnitude of the long-term shifts ETR has been tracking for the last three years is relatively minuscule. According to our data, and on a permanent basis, the hybrid work model remains the dominant and most consistent workforce option across all respondent organizations. Of course, there are sizeable shifts depending on demographics. For instance, Energy & Utilities anticipate 60% of their workforce to be fully "in-office" on a permanent basis, whereas IT/Telco respondents only expect 25% of their employees to return to a fully in-office work model. To cut the data for yourself, access the ETR Research custom Drill Down surveys.
Stay tuned for Part II of the April 2023 Macro Views Survey report next week when we will examine the top enterprise IT priorities, as determined by 1,700 IT decision makers, including in-depth looks into information security, data analytics, and some cutting-edge data into the business use cases for open generative AI and large language models. Don't feel like waiting until next week? That's ok, your own free trial is just one click away...no strings attached. Come check out the 12 years' worth of data and industry-leading research that ETR has to offer. See you next week!
Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) is a technology market research firm that leverages proprietary data from our targeted IT decision maker (ITDM) community to provide actionable insights about spending intentions and industry trends. Since 2010, we have worked diligently at achieving one goal: eliminating the need for opinions in enterprise research, which are often formed from incomplete, biased, and statistically insignificant data. Our community of ITDMs represents $1+ trillion in annual IT spend and is positioned to provide best-in-class customer/evaluator perspectives. ETR’s proprietary data and insights from this community empower institutional investors, technology companies, and ITDMs to navigate the complex enterprise technology landscape amid an expanding marketplace. Discover what ETR can do for you at www.etr.ai