-      Tech Investment Priorities for MSEs to Be Discussed at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, October 17-20 in Orlando, Florida

By : Wael Elhosany

Security and risk management, application and integration strategies, and infrastructure and operations are the top three technology priorities for midsize enterprises (MSEs) in 2022, according to a recent Gartner, Inc. survey.

“MSEs are shifting investments and even increasing budgets to fund their top technology priorities,” said Mike Cisek, VP Analyst at Gartner. “However, the accelerated rate of change in security, infrastructure, applications and cloud ecosystems complicates the selection of new tools, requiring MSE technology leaders to rapidly operationalize investments to deliver time to value.”

The Gartner survey was conducted from March through April 2022 among 134 MSE CIOs and IT leaders. Respondents were asked to identify current active IT projects, which correlated with their top technology priorities (see Figure 1).

Fig. 1: Top 3 Technology Priorities for MSEs (Based on Number of Responses Citing Active IT Projects)

Source: Gartner (September 2022)

Inflation to Impact MSE Budgets in 2023

As MSE technology leaders head into the 2023 budgeting season, they face challenges including

inflationary headwinds and a potential economic recession. Due to the size and scale of their operations, MSEs are often the first to feel the effects of inflation and are most susceptible to long-term negative impacts.

In the 2022 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey, 86% of MSE CEOs cited a belief that there would be a significant rise in inflation, with the majority anticipating that inflationary impacts would be felt for the subsequent 12 to 36 months. The most common response to inflation among MSE CEOs was to increase prices, followed by cost optimization efforts.

“Historically, the response to economic uncertainty has been to cut costs as opposed to championing new or additional investment,” said Cisek. “Yet within a typical MSE, IT spending accounts for 4.7% of total revenue on average, leaving little room for cost optimization efforts.

“During times of economic uncertainty, digital investments must align to business priority and support finance’s cash-flow strategies. MSEs can most effectively navigate inflation by rationalizing their technology portfolios while investing in solutions that will yield financial or productivity benefits to IT, employees and customers.”

Gartner clients can learn more in “The Top 3 Technology Priorities in Midsize Enterprises.”

Use the Gartner 2022-2024 Technology Adoption Roadmap for Midsize Enterprises to benchmark technology adoption plans against MSE peers.

Additional analysis on MSE IT trends will be presented during Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2022, the world's most important conferences for CIOs and other IT executives. In a world that is changing faster than ever, CIOs and IT executives will learn how to meet the moment to provide the vision and results needed to lift their organizations to the next level. Follow news and updates from the conferences on Twitter using #GartnerSYM.