Positive IT spending should continue through 2006, amid mounting unrest in the Middle East and skyrocketing oil prices, analysts said Friday.
A burst of violence in Israel and terrorist bombing in India this week sent oil prices to an all-time high, more than $76 per barrel, but tech-industry analysts remained relatively upbeat.
While analysts say IT budgets are higher this year than in prior, not all agree on how companies will spend the funds.
In the most recent Tech Trends tracking study released on Friday, AMR Research Inc. reveals 76 percent of the 200 U.S. executives participating in the survey plan to increase IT spending this year. The average budget is expected to increase by 19.5 percent, up from 5.9 percent in 2005.
AMR Research director Fenella Sirkisoon says the focus for companies will remain on physical infrastructure. "Once that's in place, companies will begin looking at software applications," she said. "They're not looking at the enterprise resource planning platforms, but rather performance management, such as data mining, which explains SAP's earnings numbers."
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