Opinion - Intelligence

Small, medium and large companies have different IT priorities:Medium-sized firms will increase software spend ... small firms will spendmore on people ... all companies plan to spend more on applications.

The 234 small, medium and large companies surveyed spend about a third of their IT budgets on hardware, and slightly less on people. Software and services make up the remainder.

Generally, firms with the least staff spend most on hardware and software.

A fifth of firms with less than 100 employees plan to increase the proportion of their budget spent on salaries. 37% of medium-sized firms (101 to 499 staff) plan to increase software spend, while 17% of big firms plan to increase spend on software and services.

Small firms spend almost 40% of software budget on systems software and development tools. Medium firms spend the largest proportion on applications. This may be because they qualify for volume licences, but are not big enough to build their own packages.

Over the next 12 months, small companies will experience the most change to software budgets. A fifth of the small firms interviewed plan to increase the proportion of their software budgets devoted to either application development tools or systems software. This may reflect the fact that smaller companies are beginning to follow in the footsteps of larger companies in moving to Windows 95, or it may be a realisation of the benefits of network and systems management tools.Our survey found that companies of all sizes also plan to spend more on applications.