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IT Outlook for 2021 Depends on Where You Stand
Factors Behind the Decline in Application Development Staffing
COVID Accelerates Digital Disruption and Innovative Business Models in the Insurance Sector
Neglect of Encryption a Prescription for Disaster
IT Spending as a Percentage of Revenue by Industry
IT Spending in the Insurance Industry
IT Spending in the Retail Industry
Featured Research
Worldwide IT Spending and Staffing Outlook for 2021
February, 2021
Despite the chaos of 2020, the outlook for 2021 is surprisingly positive. IT organizations are expecting budget growth and to consolidate the changes made in the past turbulent year. This report, based on our Q4 2020 survey, provides worldwide trends for IT spending and staffing in 2021. This year, our report assesses IT operational and capital spending plans, executive priorities for IT investment, and plans for hiring and outsourcing for IT organizations worldwide. (21 pp., 11 fig.)[Research Byte]
Application Developer Staffing Ratios
February, 2021
The way that enterprise applications are internally developed and maintained has changed. With these changes, the need for application developers is in flux, and IT organizations can benefit from a periodic assessment of their staffing levels. This report uses three metrics to make that assessment: developers as a percentage of the IT staff, users per developer, and applications per developer. We provide benchmarks for the composite sample, by organization size, and by sector. We also provide a benchmark for the larger application group, which includes personnel engaged in web development and support, quality assurance, data management, and business systems analysis. (23 pp., 9 fig.)[Research Byte]
Encryption Adoption and Best Practices
January, 2021
Encryption is a best practice for protecting sensitive or confidential information, both in storage and in transit. Data encryption software and algorithms translate data into another form, or code, so that only someone with access to a secret key—a decryption key—can read it. It has a high maturity rating, but there is ample room for improvement. This report begins with a definition of encryption. We next study the adoption and practice levels and examine those by organization size and sector. We conclude with best-practice recommendations. (16 pp., 6 fig.)[Research Byte]
ERP Support Staffing Ratios
January, 2021
For many IT organizations, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are at the center of the application portfolio. In this report, we analyze ERP support requirements in several ways. First, we look at the ERP support staffing ratio, which is the number of ERP users divided by the number of ERP support personnel. We then assess this ratio by the size of the ERP installation. We also examine the data to determine the ratios by vendor. We examine the ratio by sector, age of installation, years since last upgrade, extent of modification, and type of deployment (on-premises, cloud, or hosted) as well. Finally, we provide recommendations on optimizing ERP staffing levels. (20 pp., 10 fig.)[Research Byte]
Communications System Support Staffing Ratios
January, 2021
Corporate communications systems have become more complex, although the number of IT specialists who support these systems has stabilized in the past few years. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, IT organizations can benefit from a periodic assessment of their communications system support staffing levels. This study uses three metrics to make that assessment: support staff as a percentage of the IT staff, percentage of support staff in relation to organization size, and support staff spending per user. We provide benchmarks for the composite sample, by organization size, and by sector. We conclude with recommendations for optimizing the productivity of communications system support personnel.(20 pp., 7 fig.)
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Vendor Discount Report (January 2021)
January, 2021
The largest and best discounts are often only offered to the vendors’ best customers, and buyers may find it difficult to determine whether the discount offered is typical or whether a better deal can be negotiated. The Vendor Discounts Report is designed to give procurement personnel, lessors, lessees and departmental manager’s insight and guidance regarding current discount structures on a variety of categories of equipment in the marketplace. (11 pp., 10 fig.).IT Salary Report 2021
December, 2020
The Computer Economics IT Salary Report 2021 provides total compensation for 80 IT job functions for more than 400 U.S. metro areas and 20 industry sectors. The executive summary also provides our forecast for pay raises and hiring in 2021 and includes job descriptions for each job function. The salary tables are provided as a downloadable Microsoft Excel workbook, with total salaries reported at the 10th, 25th, 50th (median), 75th, and 90th percentiles. (36 pp., 7 figs., plus salary tables.)[Research Byte]
[Full Description and Free Executive Summary]
European IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks 2020/2021: Full Study
December, 2020
This report is a companion study to our annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study, which provides a full set of IT budgetary benchmarks and IT staffing metrics by industry sector and organizational size. This companion study for Europe should be used in conjunction with our full study to provide insight into how high-level spending and staffing benchmarks differ for European organizations.[Full Study Description]
Human Capital Management Suites 2020 RadarView
December, 2020
COVID-19 has prompted enterprises to accelerate adoption of Human Capital Management (HCM) suites, upping the deployment rate. The pandemic has forced enterprises to seek low-and no-touch solutions for HR operations. Consequently, organizations are accelerating their digitization and automation of manual HR processes. This has led to a 1.5X surge in the number of active discussions between buyers and HCM suite vendors. Workforce management, compensation, learning and development, recruitment, and employee engagement have emerged as the most sought-after functions for leverage of HCM suites. These and other trends are explored in Avasant’s new Human Capital Management Suites 2020 RadarView™ report. (42 pp.)[Research Byte]
State & Local Government Digital Services 2020-2021 RadarView
November, 2020
In 2020, the global pandemic exposed many governmental organizations in their limited availability of digital communication channels. In fact, prior to March 2020, 43% of UN member states did not have any organized digital media strategy. Many home-bound citizens relied on governments to provide them with relevant information and to deal with pressing issues around healthcare, unemployment, and economic stability. In the face of that, many governments started using a plethora of tools such as online portals, apps, social media platforms, and chatbots to reach out to residents. To support such initiatives, it is crucial that government agencies invest in modernizing their IT infrastructure for migrating workloads, automating processes, and making decisions based on data. (79 pp.)[Research Byte]
Intelligent Automation Tools 2020 RadarView
November, 2020
The robotic process automation industry has shifted toward hyperautomation, which leverages AI, ML, and NLP to enable end-to-end automation. Tool vendors have evolved their solutions into enterprise-class suites covering the entire automation lifecycle by bundling process discovery, workflow orchestration, prediction and recommendation, document processing, analytics, and unified dashboards. Software vendors such as SAP, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle have also entered the AI-led automation marketplace by embedding automation in their™ applications and platforms, organically or inorganically. (51 pp.)[Research Byte]
IT Security Staffing Ratios
November, 2020
IT security staffing has finally increased to match increases in IT spending. In this report, we present the five-year trend in IT security staffing and provide benchmarks for understanding IT security staff head count: as a percentage of the IT staff and as a percentage of the Network and Communications Group. We also analyze IT security staffing in terms of the number of applications, users, and network devices. In addition, our analysis includes the influence of organization size and sector on staffing requirements. We conclude with recommendations for optimizing IT security staffing. (21 pp., 9 fig.)[Research Byte]
IT Quality Assurance Staffing Ratios
October, 2020
Staffing levels for IT quality assurance personnel are in a state of flux for several reasons, including the new ways in which software is being developed and the varying needs of industry sectors. In this report, we first evaluate recent changes in IT QA staffing levels. We then provide three benchmarks by organization size and by sector: QA staff as a percentage of the IT staff, QA staff as a percentage of the Application Group, and applications per QA staff member. We conclude with recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the QA function within the IT organization.(20 pp., 7 fig.)[Research Byte]
Financial Management Suites 2020 RadarView
October, 2020
The importance of financial management applications is rising, as the finance function is evolving to support complex business decisions and to generate accurate insights. Modularization and better integration with third-party applications are expanding financial management (FM) suite capabilities. This is accelerating adoption across organizations of all sizes. Leading vendors are investing OCR, NLP, ML, and RPA to automate financial management processes and build an intelligent finance function. These and other trends are explored in Avasant’s new Financial Management Suites 2020 RadarView report.[Research Byte]
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Region Digital Services 2020-2021 RadarView
October, 2020
In the face of dramatic challenges in 2020, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has witnessed growth in non-oil sectors. This is a direct result of structural reforms that are conducive to economic diversification. The six Arabian Peninsula governments instituted policies and initiatives—such as data security laws, permission of 100% foreign ownership, exemptions from corporate and income taxes, and granting permanent residency permits to foreign investors—that have resulted in global businesses entering the GCC region in recent years. As a result, local enterprises facing global disruptions are embracing digital transformation to stay competitive. These and other trends are explored in Avasant's new GCC Region Digital Services 2020-2021 RadarView report. (118 pp.)[Research Byte]
Revisiting the Impact of COVID-19 on IT Organizations in 2020
October, 2020
Our latest survey shows that that a K-shaped recovery of IT spending has begun. Nearly an equal number of companies have increased their IT budgets in response to the pandemic as those that decreased them, with slightly more actually increasing. This report outlines how the pandemic is affecting IT operational budgets, IT capital budgets, IT staff head counts, compensation, outsourcing, budgets for new projects, and the use of the public cloud. It also shows trends in working from home. We also report how long IT leaders expect it will take for their budgets to recover to prerecession levels. We also forecast expected IT spending cuts by industry for all of 2020, along with our recommendations for IT leaders in managing their spending through the crisis. (26 pp., 12 fig.)[Research Byte]
SD-WAN Managed Services 2020 RadarView
October, 2020
With constantly changing cloud environments, SD-WAN is transforming enterprises and allowing them to evolve quickly. With COVID-19, most companies have adopted work-from-home policies, which is causing a shift in approach to more hybrid connections, more cloud enablers, and thriving analytics and artificial intelligence. SD-WAN and secure access solution edge (SASE) will bring many differences in the upcoming year, with all solutions in one secure platform. These and other trends are covered in Avasant’s SD-WAN Managed Services 2020 RadarView report. (93 pp.)[Research Byte]
IT Management Best Practices 2020/2021
October, 2020
The best-run IT organizations not only focus their process improvement efforts on those of other departments, they also seek to optimize their own IT management processes internally. In this study, we examine the growth and maturity of 34 IT management practices which we have grouped into five major categories: IT governance practices, IT financial management practices, IT operational management practices, IT security and risk management practices, and application development practices. (196 pp., 178 figs.)[Full Report Description and Sample Pages]
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IT Outsourcing Statistics 2020/2021
August, 2020
This major study profiles outsourcing activity for 11 IT functions: application development, application management, data center operations, database administration, desktop support, disaster recovery services, help desk services, IT security, network operations, system implementation/integration and web/e-commerce systems. For each IT function, we measure the frequency and level of outsourcing. We also look at the current plans of IT organizations to increase or decrease the amount of work they outsource. We examine the customer experience to assess whether organizations are successfully lowering costs or improving service through outsourcing. Finally, we show the outsourcing frequency by sector for each function. (113 pp., 97 fig.)Full Report Description
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