What Should Be Your IT Spending Priorities in 2019? 5 Key Areas Worth Investing Your Tech Budget In

Data center systems, IoT, business apps, cybersecurity, SaaS core systems, end-user technology, cloud tools, and infrastructure... what should be your IT spending priorities in 2019?

What are IT leaders' areas of focus this year? What are they spending most of their tech budgets on? 

Before we get into specifics, here's your situation as a CIO in 2019 summed up to its main features:

  • you must take on new and new responsibilities, from product development to... data analytics
  • you need to invest your budget the smart way: in those specific areas that will help your IT organization run, grow, and transform
  • your goals, that depend greatly on your tech spending priorities, range from meeting your customer needs to creating new solutions, to driving innovation and increasing market share

So, what should be your technology priorities in 2019 in order to meet most of those key objectives that you've set for this year?

Here are tech experts' top 5 spending priorities this year:

 

1. Cybersecurity: Make It One of Your IT Spending Priorities in 2019

Keep cybersecurity/privacy on top of your list of priorities this year, as well. Keep upgrading your current solutions, work on developing new ones... make it a constant “concern” and objective.

Just consider all that new technology that you've brought in and the security risks that it could pose. Also, try to anticipate the challenges that could arise from interfacing with the already existing technology in your infrastructure.

 

2. Business Apps that Streamline Your Operations

Expect your spending towards business apps to increase this year.

And it's only but predictable: whether it's eCommerce, HR, collaboration & communication, accounting, analytics, and data management... business apps will “turbocharge” your various business operations.

Now, you can't expect to be 100% customer-centric and to quickly leverage your own data when... you're still investing most of your resources on handling mundane, repetitive operations, right?

 

3. Cloud Computing: Make Sure You're Reaping Its Benefits, Too

Another one of your IT spending priorities in 2019 should be a cloud-based infrastructure.

Smartly investing your tech budget means spending on new cloud tools and cloud apps and thus embracing the “cloud movement”. Being among those that are reaping its benefits.

2019 is all about rushing to the cloud, therefore tech executives will make sure to put all the expenses associated with it on top of their budget lists.

 

4. Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

List some disruptive technologies among your major IT spending priorities this year.

Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, machine learning, IoT... they all come with a "too" great potential to transform your business from the ground up. So, you just can't afford to overlook them when you determine your tech budget priorities...

 

5. Automating Your Workflow Process

Your IT spending priorities in 2019 should be geared at automating your business process management.

At making your current operations (even) more efficient and putting the repetitive, tedious, time-consuming tasks on... “autopilot”. It's only then that you can focus all your resources on meeting your customers' needs.

It's only then that you can “dare” to hope that you'll... stay relevant and become competitive.

The END!

These should be your top 5 IT spending priorities in 2019. Put cybersecurity on top of your list, followed, closely, by cloud infrastructure expenses and business apps. 

Note: you can reduce your spending with a data center since surveys have shown that this year IT leaders are investing less in data center systems and more in... the other 5 areas here mentioned.

Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash