More than three-quarters of finance leaders plan to continue investing in digital technologies this year, according to research from Gartner. These analysts predict CFOs will maintain or increase IT spending regardless of inflation levels or interest rate hikes.
One area where CFOs plan to concentrate spending is in cloud solutions.
Consider these additional findings about cloud trends:
- Gartner projects overall 2023 IT expenditures will grow greater than 5% globally, with the bulk of new investments going to cloud tech.
- Worldwide spending on public cloud services (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure) will reach $591 billion this year, which is more than 20% higher than last year’s prediction, according to Gartner.
- Research by IDC reinforces these funding trends, showing year-over-year spending on computing and storage infrastructure for cloud deployments up nearly 25% by the third quarter of 2022.
Why are finance executives committing so many dollars to cloud services and infrastructure? One reason is cybersecurity. Deloitte recently found that cybersecurity provides the foundation for cloud-driven digital transformation, accounting for about half of any given initiative’s success.
While these findings pertain mostly to enterprise IT, small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) would be wise to take notice. SMBs make up as much as 99% of U.S. companies per government statistics, which means these organizations compete regularly with large corporations across industries and markets.
The growth in cloud migration in recent years underscores that this is a movement that’s clearly being embraced by organizations of all sizes that are looking for more secure yet flexible computing solutions.