State of IT 2025: Insights on Budgets, Jobs, and AI
For the past 13 years, Spiceworks has surveyed IT professionals to find out how they feel about IT budgets, emerging technology, and the job market for the year ahead. The 2025 State of IT report—powered by Aberdeen Strategy & Research—offers actionable insights for everyone in IT, whether you be a professional, a marketer, a recruiter, or an executive.
The IT industry and the IT professionals powering it are crucial not only to individual companies leveraging technology to serve their employees and customers better, but also to the entire world.
In the US alone, the IT industry adds $1.9 trillion of value to GDP, representing 10% of the entire economy, according to the International Trade Administration. Globally, IT is a $5 trillion industry! Additionally, no modern business could compete without the digital infrastructure that powers the applications and services used by billions of individuals and the computing devices they rely on.
Given the huge scale of IT spending and the potential for technological advancements (such as artificial intelligence today and the internet before it) to fundamentally change everything, insights into the constantly evolving tech industry can help everyone understand what to expect in the future.
Spiceworks’ 2025 State of IT is an annual report offering forward-looking insights on IT budgets, emerging technology adoption, and the tech job market. Now in its 13th year, the latest edition of the study—powered by Aberdeen Strategy & Research—offers useful data-backed guidance for everyone in IT, including IT professionals, business leaders, and tech vendors.
Key Highlights from the 2025 State of IT
- 64% of businesses plan to increase IT budgets in 2025. Total IT spending is expected to grow at a healthy 9% year-over-year.
- More than 50% of companies plan to spend more on security solutions and generative AI in 2025. These are the two technologies where companies are most likely to increase investments.
- Companies are seven times as likely to increase the size of their IT department than decrease. However, most IT leaders (57%) say it’s difficult to hire skilled IT talent.
- Key challenges IT departments expect to grapple with in 2025 include increases in product costs, IT skills gaps, wages not keeping up with cost of living, and the need to do more with less.
- In an effort to maximize value or find the best fit for their needs, companies are open to changing vendors for 59% of the technologies they currently use.
Of particular concern in 2025 are cybersecurity risks and artificial intelligence. Respondents had both good and bad things to say about AI’s disruptive potential. Positive effects include:
- Automating repetitive tasks
- Accelerating information retrieval
- Protecting against security threats
On the other hand, the negative implications could make life more difficult:
- AI replacing IT jobs
- Hackers using AI maliciously
The full version of Spiceworks’ 2025 State of IT report provides detailed insights into:
- Which security solutions and AI use cases IT professionals believe are worth investing in
- Which companies plan to hire IT professionals in 2025
- How companies are cutting costs and where they plan to focus investments
You can view the full 2025 State of IT report online. Additionally, you can watch the livestream as the report is revealed at SpiceWorld 2024 on November 14 at 4:15 PM (Central).
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