Inflation-busting tech budgets predicted

Tech spending in the UK is likely to increase at a quicker rate than inflation over the next twelve months - despite an uncertain economic climate.

According to research by the National Computing Centre (NCC), around 58 per cent of companies will make inflation-busting increases to what they spend on IT.

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The median growth rate for IT spending is predicted to be 4.9 per cent with the highest growth likely to be seen in the construction and health sectors.

NCC MD Stefan Foster said the results of the survey suggest tech buyers are confident about future economics but are not being over-optimistic.

The NCC suggests Microsoft is likely to be one of the big winners as companies look to refresh their desktop infrastructure, replacing Windows XP with Windows Vista.

XP currently dominates the server marketplace with 71 per cent of the businesses using it but in two years' time Vista is likely to make up around 75 per cent of the market.

And desktops may become less popular with a 57 per cent increase in the number of laptops and a 134 per cent increase in PDAs predicted over the next two years. According to the research, the number of desktops is set to fall by around two per cent.

Companies are also looking to invest heavily in virtualisation, storage area networks and VoIP. Meanwhile the increasing popularity of ITIL is likely to fuel spending on business process management apps.

Gartner recently recommended that companies start cutting tech costs in order to protect themselves from a predicted global recession.

The NCC's The Benchmark of IT Spending 2008 survey included responses from 120 organisations with a combined IT spend of more than £750m.