Spiceworks: IT Spending to Rise 18% in North America, Europe in 2020

Written by Todd R. Weiss
September 26, 2019

Some 44% of respondents said their IT budgets will rise in 2020, compared to 8% planning for declines.

… another insight from the study – that emerging trends such as containers and AI – are on the minds of SMBs and enterprises as they plan their IT spending for next year.

“The channel should care about it,” said Tsai of containers and their increasing growth. “Smaller businesses don’t have as many resources because their IT offices are not as well-staffed and they don’t have as much money.”

Only about 18% of small businesses are using or experimenting with containers so far, compared to some 46% of enterprises, but those numbers are expected to continue to grow, he said.

“Maybe two or three years from now the smaller guys will catch up,” said Tsai. “It is definitely an emerging trend. And AI will be adopted more in the coming years,” with respondents in the study saying they expect 42% of companies to be using AI in the next two years, compared to 15% usage today.

“Businesses have a lot of questions about it,” he said. “Smaller companies, they wanted to know about cloud in the last few years. They got help from partners and then started using it.”

The same patterns are being seen with the slow adoption and interest in AI inside smaller companies, he said.

“Companies don’t know where to start” with AI, said Tsai. “Channel partners want to position themselves as trusted advisers on this stuff. If they can get their customers to trust them on it, they’ll keep coming back for that trusted advice.”

The top buyer pain points in these areas are identifying the right technology products to meet their needs, as well as comparing all the potential products side by side so they can be evaluated, he added.

“This is where the channel can help,” he said.

Spiceworks is a professional network of more than 7 million members who use the company’s online user support forums on a regular basis. The company, which is often referred to as the Facebook of the IT world, offers a variety of free help desk and other services that are widely used by businesses of all sizes. The free services are provided through an ad-supported business model.