Curo Talent has released the IT forecast 2017, an independent report into the trends and challenges facing the UK technology market in the year ahead.
The leading IT freelance agency approached business leaders to find out about their key challenges, objectives, and focuses for 2017, and asked them a series of questions including where they plan to invest their budget this year and what their greatest concern for the market is.
It was revealed that while 15% of leaders named improving their current IT offerings as their main commercial objective this year, just 4% agreed that their central objective for 2017 would be Brexit preparation.
2017 has also presented a shift in focus for IT leaders, with the rise of business intelligence and security technologies apparent in the research. 15% of respondents named security as their biggest technological focus, which appears to be a response to increased public concern about the safety of their personal data.
In terms of budgets, the new report shows that just 10% of business leaders are planning to cut their IT budget in 2017, whereas 86% are committed to increasing or reorganising their budgets.
Curo Talent have undertaken this research to inform the sector’s leaders about the trends and issues they can expect to see affect IT over the next 12 months. The IT freelance agency plans to conduct a series of surveys of IT leaders during 2017, with the next survey taken after Article 50 is triggered.
The IT forecast 2017 also discovered that the biggest challenge facing the UK’s Information Technology sector this year is alignment with other departments, showing that the IT teams may be losing sight of what other aspects of the business are doing, making it difficult to connect and understand each other’s goals.
Graham Smith, Head of Marketing at Curo Talent commented: “It’s encouraging to see the amount of budget increases predicted for 2017, as it shows businesses are realising the benefit that IT brings.
“In terms of Brexit, there are a number of arguments as to why the IT team may be right not to be concerned. Firstly, even after Theresa May’s speech on 17 January, there is little detail about the impact of Brexit. So why worry about a challenge you cannot see?”
The full results of this research can be found in Curo Talent’s full report titled IT Forecast 2017 – UK trends and challenges
