ETR's APR24 Macro Views Findings Report 

Over 1,760 IT decision makers participated in ETR's Macro Views Survey, and we recently published a findings webinar and full report on the full survey takeways. Continue reading for some highlights. 

This survey period, the April 2024 Macro Views Survey, captured responses from 1844 IT decision makers (ITDMs), with nearly a quarter of respondents from Global 2000 organizations and 74% holding C-suite or Director-level titles. IT spend estimates for 2024 Q2 are tempered vs. three months prior, now sitting at +2.5% y/y growth. After starting the year more optimistic than the year-end October data, respondents’ updated estimates for full year 2024 spend are more cautious at an average of +3.4% growth vs. 2023. 2024 Q3 estimates open at +2.8% y/y growth.

Downward revision in full year IT spending growth is less prevalent among Large enterprises (-0.9 percentage points), whereas Small organizations (-1.7 percentage points) indicate a decline nearly double in magnitude. By industry, Nonprofit and Energy/Utilities saw the largest negative revision in full year spending projections, while Financials/Insurance, Education, and Industrials/Materials/Manufacturing were the most stable.

Across the full sample, 21% of total respondents indicated plans to decrease spend (by 1% or worse) in 2024 Q2 vs. 2023 Q2. Of those, reducing staffing costs is the most frequently cited method to achieve the decrease in IT spend, and has grown in relative prevalence vs. prior polling windows. Delaying/stopping new projects remains the second most frequently cited method, though slightly less than previously. Reducing hardware/CapEx spending is stable and jumps over reducing consulting/outsourcing spending as the third most frequently cited method; these are offset by a growing emphasis on reducing excess Cloud resources.

On the other hand, 62% of respondents indicated plans to increase spend (by 1% or more) in 2024 Q2 vs. 2023 Q2. A quarter (25%) of those respondents indicate plans to achieve this increase in IT spend by accelerating new projects, followed by 17% indicating plans to expand Cloud resources. Just 5% indicate their increase in IT spend will be primarily driven by adopting new vendors.

Fewer respondents cite hardware price increases than those citing increases in price for services and software. More than half (57%) of respondents indicate that vendors have raised pricing for hardware in the past 6 months, as compared to 7 to 12 months ago; 22% indicate a magnitude of 6% or greater. Meanwhile, 67% of respondents indicated an increase in pricing for IT services over the past 6 months, with 30% indicating a magnitude of 6% or more, and 68% of respondents indicated an increase in software pricing from their vendors over the past 6 months, with 30% indicating a 6% or more increase.

Ranking sector priorities, Identity, SSO, and MFA continue to lead Information Security priorities over the next 12 months, followed by Vulnerability Management & Patching and EDR/XDR. Observability & SIEM is seeing increased prioritization vs. six months ago, while Web Application Security sees a weaker average ranking. Within Analytics / B.I. / Big Data, Business Intelligence & Reporting remains the priority leader, holding steady vs. prior polling periods. Analytics & Big Data Platforms is seeing a stronger ranking vs. October 2023, creating a slight gap over the now third place Data Preparation & Transformation.

Finally, only 20% of respondents say that their organization is NOT evaluating generative AI / LLMs, a number that has consistently fallen each survey period. All listed use cases have seen their levels of evaluation grow, led by text and data summarization; customer support, writing content and copy, and code generation and documentation follow closely behind in evaluations. Once again, nearly half of respondents (49%) said that generative AI investments were newly added to the budget. 42% said that the dollars were reallocated from elsewhere (a two percentage-point increase since January). Of those who said generative AI funds were reallocated from elsewhere, business applications were again the most common source, though at a slightly lower rate than in January. Those funding generative AI initiatives by reallocating money from non-IT departments is down by four percentage-points, while those reallocating from Productivity Applications, Advanced Data & Analytics, and Robotic Process Automation have increased vs. three months ago.

That's enough free data for one article, but if you would like to see the full Macro Views survey report, including which vendors are most vulnerable to spending declines, you can access the entire data set on our research platform.

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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