World’s Biggest Enterprises Spending More on Technology Than Ever Before

 

Robust IT infrastructure and thorough business intelligence practices are now the norm across a wealth of sectors.

The cost of implementing enterprise systems may be plateauing to an extent due to a mixture of more adoption and competition between vendors, but this hasn’t stopped the biggest organizations leveraging more resources than ever in the hunt to stay one step ahead.

Enterprise IT spending at record levels

Including internal spending, the world’s largest enterprises exhausted a mammoth US$895 billion on technology in 2014, according to figures collated by the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Some of the biggest companies are actively using IT spending as a way to streamline their strategic planning, with the focus for many over the coming months and years defined by the expenditure their IT departments make today.

While buzzwords such as ‘cloud’ and ‘analytics’ remain important, the majority of companies focused their spending on one of the old favorites; customer-facing initiatives.

Balance between vendor and customer

The spotlight will now be on vendors to ensure they can offer the levels of service enterprise users expect, all while developing IT systems and products that are truly innovative.

“When it comes to IT innovation, the world’s largest companies are often criticized as being risk averse, sluggish and siloed. However, when acknowledged and appreciated, marquee organizations can be loyal, serve as references for industry peers, and refer business to their major vendors,” explained Jessica Goepfert, program director of IDC’s Global Technology and Industry Research Organization.

Enterprise IT users expect more than ever from vendors, with the latter needing to show value, not features according to Stanford University professor Steve Blank, as noted by ZDNet.

Products should actively realize the needs of business customers, rather than just offering the latest and greatest features for the sake of it, as they may not present tangible results.

Alternatively, as the amount of capital spent on enterprise IT amongst the biggest businesses could well top $1 trillion in the next few years, these companies will be keen to ensure the return on that astronomical investment is as great as possible.