Don’t be fooled by reports of huge spending increases on as-a-service software. Five years after Marc Andreessen famously declared that software is eating the world, the reality paints a more nuanced picture.
While spending on applications has recently increased, CIOs are focused on constraining it. Despite the increasing importance of “digital transformation,” enterprises are not hiring a disproportionate number of developers. Instead, software development and maintenance are now a part of many IT job roles and categories.
The 2017 SIM IT Trends Study should raise a red flag for anyone expecting the software gravy train to continue indefinitely. The report surveyed 1213 members of the Society for Information Management’s members, all of which were senior IT leaders and 490 were CIOs. Since 2012, application/software development/maintenance has risen in its relative position in IT budgets and the respondents citing it as one of the largest areas of IT investment rose from 29 percent in 2015 to 34 percent.
However, only 14 percent believe applications should get more investment. While CIOs plan to continue investing in analytics/data, security and cloud services, spending on software is feeling a pinch.
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