ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- New 2013 IT budget benchmarks from CEB (NYSE: CEB), the leading member-based advisory company, indicate that CIOs expect total IT budgets to increase 1.8 percent, roughly 50 percent less than they did in 2012. Despite economic woes, European organizations are expecting a 2 percent increase in IT budgets. The primary driver of total budget growth comes from increases in operational expenditures of 2.5 percent. Capital expenditure budget growth has stalled.

Two-thirds of CIOs expect to see increases in operating expenditures in 2013, while one-fifth plan to reduce them. CIOs expect to allocate funding increases to projects that improve employee productivity through better insights, collaboration and mobility, and to increase IT's delivery flexibility and efficiency.

CEB's survey is based on more than 180 companies representing $52 billion in IT spending. Findings indicate that CIOs will double down on investments in mobile applications and information management to drive employee productivity in 2013.


    --  Spending on mobile applications will grow 50 percent in 2013.  CIOs will
        concentrate both on developing new mobile applications and making sure
        existing applications are ready for the mobile environment.  This does
        not include funds spent to supply employees with mobile devices or
        marketing funds spend on mobility.
    --  CIOs will continue shifting spending from process automation (30
        percent) to information management (32 percent) projects.  Information
        management projects are considered those that deal with business
        intelligence, collaboration or customer interface.

Additionally, CIOs are expected to increase spending to make IT delivery more flexible and efficient:


    --  Spending on the cloud will increase to roughly 7 percent of total IT
        budgets.  Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) will receive the largest share of
        spending, followed by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
    --  Seventy-five percent of organizations that offer some form of end-to-end
        IT services plan to devote as much as 30 percent of their IT operating
        expenditure to this delivery model.

"CIOs recognize that the nature of work is changing and in this new environment there is a huge opportunity for IT to drive employee productivity," said Andrew Horne, managing director at CEB. "These investments suggest that the days of IT project queues filled with process automation projects are over. The best companies are laser-focused on equipping employees with the tools they need to more effectively contribute to the bottom line. To meet this demand, IT must be more flexible than ever before, so it's not surprising that spending on end-to-end IT services and the cloud are also slated to increase."

Visit us to learn more about CEB or its IT Budget Benchmarking Survey.

About CEB
CEB is the leading member-based advisory company. By combining the best practices of thousands of member companies with our advanced research methodologies and human capital analytics, we equip senior leaders and their teams with insight and actionable solutions to transform operations. This distinctive approach, pioneered by CEB, enables executives to harness peer perspectives and tap into breakthrough innovation without costly consulting or reinvention. The CEB member network includes more than 16,000 executives and the majority of top companies globally. For more information visit www.executiveboard.com

SOURCE CEB