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Martin Vilaboy Editor-in-Chief martin@bekabusinessmedia.com Gerald Baldino Senior Editor gerald@bekabusinessmedia.com Percy Zamora Art Director percy@bekabusinessmedia.com Rob Schubel Digital Manager marketing@bekabusinessmedia.com Berge Kaprelian Group Publisher berge@bekabusinessmedia.com (480) 503-0770 Anthony Graffeo Publisher anthony@bekabusinessmedia.com (203) 304-8547 Nazal Parvin Senior Sales Executive nazal@bekabusinessmedia.com (415) 516-7053 Beka Business Media Berge Kaprelian President and CEO Neil Ende General Counsel Corporate Headquarters 10115 E Bell Road, Suite 107 - #517 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 Voice: 480.503.0770 Email: berge@bekabusinessmedia.com © 2020 Beka Business Media, All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in any form or medium without express written permission of Beka Business Media is prohibited. ChannelVision and the ChannelVision logo are trademarks of Beka Business Media Reactions to the pandemic have forced IT organizations to scramble. Faced with the shift out-of-office, an inability to utilize human power to perform certain tasks and a nasty recession, IT departments have had to alter budget decisions and halt projects. In terms of where their money will go, however, “IT leaders for the most part will only be tweaking their IT spending priorities around the edges,” said Computer Economics, upon the June release of its latest annual report on business IT spending and staffing. Despite all that is swirling, Computer Economics found little or no change in business’s IT spending priorities. Similar to the past several years, initiatives around cloud applications and infrastructure, business analytics and digital transformation once again top the list of priorities. Certainly, there is increased interest in disaster recovery and continuity, but for the most part, “the current crisis is accelerating technology trends that were already under way.” Spending Priorities by IT Initiative Cloud applications 83% Cloud infrastructure 71% Data analytics/BI 63% Digital transformation 56% Systems/data integration 48% DR/Business continuity 33% Legacy systems 15% IT shared services 13% Automation 4% Source: Computer Economics, 2020 It’s not hard to see why. In many ways, the forces of the pandemic have made attributes of “cloud” and “digital transformation” even more important to operations than any time before 2020. As examples, Computer Economics points to entertainment companies and their shift from theatres to digital platform distribution; as well as doctors who have been compelled to figure out telehealth services. The huge surge in e-commerce spending required supply chains to further embrace digitization. Ultimately, if a business didn’t see the value of agility, speed, resourcefulness and the ability to maintain connectivity and communications across a sprawling workforce before COVID, you might want to scratch that business off your lead list if they still feel that way now. “Our survey indicates that, because of the pandemic, many companies may not be able to follow through on all of their new projects, at least for now” said David Wagner, senior research director at Computer Economics. “But the trends are likely to hold. The economic benefits of the cloud are well known, and digital transformation is driving the business in these uncertain times.” The research firm’s survey of the impact of the pandemic on IT spending also indicated that most organizations have not yet committed to IT budget cuts for 2020. “This means that if business bounces back,” said CE researchers, “we could see many of those top priority initiatives restarted with vigor.” IT Buyers Sticking with Priorities LETTER 6 CHANNEL VISION | July - August, 2020