IT Spending Expected to Rise in 2005

While 51 percent of mid-sized enterprises surveyed project an increase in high-tech spending, another one-third expect IT spending to go up by more than 15 percent, according to a new study by Info-Tech Research Group, an IT research company based in London, Ontario.

The study also shows that the three top industries planning to increase spending are health care, retail/wholesale and professional services. The three top IT spending priorities are storage, servers and telephony (VoIP).

''While larger enterprises are experiencing moderate growth at best, our study shows that mid-sized enterprises are aggressively increasing their IT spend this year,'' says Frank Koelsch, executive vice president of Info-Tech Research Group. ''We expect that vendors with strong offerings for the mid-market, particularly in areas identified as high priorities by our clients, will perform very well in 2005.''

Info-Tech's analysts surveyed more than 1,400 companies in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. The findings are reported in the firm's annual report, IT Priorities 2005.