The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated spending on cloud computing, automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning and Microsoft and Amazon Web Services appear to be big winners, according to a Flexera report.
Flexera's State of Tech Spend Report found that 49% of companies expect to increase information technology spending in 2021 with another 19% maintaining current levels.
Fifty-seven percent of 474 respondents said they increased spending on software as a service due to COVID-19 and 49% upped spending on public cloud services, according to Flexera. As cloud spending surged, 36% said that they cut on-premises software.
Overall, cloud spending represented 30% of total IT budgets up from 25% in 2020.
As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation and cloud efforts, Microsoft and AWS appeared to take wallet share. Consider:
Overall, cloud spending passes on-premises infrastructure. For instance, 27% of respondents said they will "reduce significantly" the number of data centers in 2021 with 7% eliminating them completely.
Spending on automation also shifted as 73% said they will increase spending on automation and 64% said they would spend more on AI and machine learning, according to Flexera.
Other key findings: