CIOs: The Econalypse Ate Our 2009 Budgets

No surprises here. The econalypse has sent IT managers scrambling to redraft their already diminished 2009 budgets. About 42 percent of chief information officers have cut their budgets to grapple with the souring economy, according to a new survey by Gartner (IT). However, 54 percent have kept their budgets flat and an enviable four percent have actually raised them. Gartner reports that in March and April of this year, budgets declined by a weighted average of 4.7 percent. That’s quite a bit different from the firm’s earlier prediction of generally flat spending for the first quarter of 2009. As Gartner’s Mark McDonald told Forbes, “It’s almost as if Jan. 1 started on April 1. [CIOs] re-did their plans in the first quarter once they understood what the global financial crisis would mean to them.”

Interesting. So, given the continuing volution of the financial crisis, can we expect further budget adjustments in the future? McDonald doesn’t think so. “CIOs gave us every indication that the budgets they have now are the budgets they will have for the rest of the year,” he said. “The number who have a contingency plan is only about half, and most of those CIOs don’t believe they’re going to have to execute those contingency plans….Of the CIOs we surveyed, 38% expect to see a recovery by September 2010, and another 32% expect a recovery by March of 2010. Only 24% said it would be beyond September 2010.”