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Section 1
Strategic Investments for a New Era of Productivity and Security
2026 State of IT data confirms an evolution: Even investments in emerging technologies are grounded in practical business applications that directly enhance human productivity, security, and efficiency. Businesses prioritize immediate ROI through core elements like speed, space, and staff skills. While AI is highly disruptive, its current rapid adoption is pragmatic, focused on augmenting the human worker (automating repetitive tasks, optimizing code) rather than speculative long-term disruption.
Section 2
The 2026 IT Budget Landscape: Cautious Growth and Core Drivers
The overall volume of IT spending continues to expand, projecting an aggregate budget growth rate of approximately 11%. However, this growth is accompanied by intense scrutiny, as businesses demand strict cost justifications for every investment. In 2026, 55% of companies plan to increase their IT budgets, down from 62% in 2025. This budget shift is driven by foundational necessity, not luxury spending.
Expected Change in IT Budget (Year-Over-Year)
Percentage of Respondents
Percentage of Respondents
Percentage of Respondents
The Top Four Investment Drivers Confirm a Focus on Modernization and Risk Mitigation:
54%
Need to Upgrade Outdated IT Infrastructure
This is the leading driver, demonstrating an emphasis on system modernization and resilience.
53%
Increased Priority on IT Projects
Tied closely to infrastructure upgrades, this indicates that companies are packaging legacy tech replacement with strategic projects that enable upside opportunities, deliver operational efficiencies, or manage risk.
49%
Increased Security Concerns
Security is treated as a non-negotiable, essential operational expense across all regions and company sizes.
46%
Supporting Company AI Initiatives
AI has firmly entered the top tier of budget drivers, signaling that enterprises view it as beneficial for future competitiveness and efficiency.
Key Regional Differences: North America vs. EMEA
While the core drivers remain constant, the rate of budget growth and influence factors vary significantly by region:
- EMEA exhibits significantly higher confidence in budget growth (61% of companies plan an increase) compared to North America (52%).
- North America’s focus is centered on internal modernization and strategy, evidenced by a greater concern for updating infrastructure (59% NA vs. 48% EMEA) and stronger influence from senior leadership.
- EMEA is more exposed to external economic factors, making currency fluctuations a significantly greater budgetary concern than in NA.
The Efficiency Mandate: Cost-Saving Measures
Amid growth, organizations are implementing pragmatic cost-saving strategies focused on optimization and rationalization. Businesses are scrutinizing their tech investments, and 88% of IT decision-makers are open to switching at least some tech vendors. For most, the goal is to clean up excess spend rather than resort to widespread staff cuts. The three most common measures reflect a focus on operational efficiency:
- Re-evaluating current vendors or contracts (39%)
- Decommissioning unnecessary infrastructure or devices (38%)
- Hiring freeze/slowdown (31%)
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Section 3
Core Investment Meets Emerging Tech Adoption
The spending breakdown reveals that organizations are investing in tools that empower employees, strengthen core systems, build flexibility, enhance efficiency, and increase resilience.
Below is a sneak preview of tech spending stats from the 2026 State of IT. For an in-depth IT budget breakdown across many more technology categories and spending areas, download the full eBook.
Continued Investment in the Basics: The Human-Centric Core
Investment is heavily weighted toward supporting the human worker and maintaining foundational infrastructure:
Hardware: Spending is dominated by end-user compute, with laptops (20.9%) and desktops (14.9%) combined accounting for over one-third of the total hardware budget. Investments in core infrastructure, including servers (13.3%) and networking (9.8%), confirms the ongoing need for reliable compute and connectivity.
Software: The largest software investment areas are focused on the digital tools employees need daily. Operating Systems (10.9%) and Productivity Software (10.5%) make up over 21% of the total software budget.
Managed Services: A decisive shift toward outsourcing core, non-differentiating functions is underway. Managed IT Services (26.4%) and Managed Infrastructure and Cloud (25.3%) are the two largest spending areas within the category, reflecting a strategy to externalize day-to-day operations and core compute/resilience to specialized providers.
Granting Real Estate to Emerging Tech Adoption
Investment in emerging technologies demonstrates a clear priority on speed, enhanced productivity, and resource flexibility. Technologies that automate and augment human work show the highest total adoption and future growth intent:
AI Leads the Way: Artificial Intelligence is among the most widely adopted future technologies
Automation is Essential: IT automation technology (50% current use) is crucial for driving immediate operational efficiency and freeing up talent for strategic tasks.
Connectivity and Speed: High adoption of 5G technology (54%) and Gigabit Wi-Fi networking (47%) ensures the high-speed, low-latency connectivity essential for remote workers and advanced applications.
OpEx Focus: The adoption of Serverless computing (32%) and Composable infrastructure (29%) indicates a growing preference for on-demand, utility-based consumption models that reduce wasted spending.
Business Adoption of Top 10 Emerging Technologies
Percentage of Respondents
Percentage of Respondents
Percentage of Respondents
Percentage of Respondents
Percentage of Respondents
Percentage of Respondents
Section 4
The Maturing State of Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity has moved from a back-office function to a highly visible business imperative often prioritized by senior leadership. Increased security concerns is one of the top factors leading to IT budget increases in 2026, which is an acknowledgment that today, mitigating cybersecurity-related risks and compliance are critical.
Security investments are not just growing; they are a top beneficiary of year-over-year increases. In fact, four of the top 10 IT spending categories showing the largest net increase are security-related, led by Managed Security, which has a Net Spending Index of +81.4%.
MFA is Mainstream, but Not Enough
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) has gone mainstream, with adoption by more than 70% of all respondents. However, this foundational measure is not sufficient to fully secure the enterprise, driving growth in next-generation identity and access solutions.
70%
of organizations currently use MFA
Identity and Access Security Solutions are Prime for Growth
The quest for a frictionless user experience and stronger enterprise defense is driving a rise in strategic access solutions:
- Passwordless Authentication and Identity Governance solutions are seeing increased adoption, underscoring the ongoing maturity among IT professionals who are embracing the business and technical aspects of identity management.
- The need to secure and manage a diverse, remote/hybrid workforce has led to increasing adoption of advanced network access technologies. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) are both currently adopted by approximately one-third of all respondents and show very high projections for near-term growth.
The Challenge: Showing Measurable Business Value
IT professionals are increasingly challenged to show how cybersecurity solutions deliver measurable business value to other stakeholders in the purchase process. The ultimate mission is to help senior leaders make better-informed business decisions about cybersecurity-related risks.
Proposed investments in security are justified based on three high-level business outcomes:
- Managing downside risks to an acceptable level (cost avoidance)
- Improving operational efficiencies (cost savings)
- Enabling upside opportunities (revenue, profit, growth)
Business Adoption of Advanced Cybersecurity Solutions
| High-Level Area | Cybersecruity Solution | Currently Using | Plan to use in next 2 years |
| Endpoint Security | Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) | 55% | 12% |
| Patch Management | 55% | 12% | |
| Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) | 54% | 12% | |
| SecOps | Security Info. and Event Management (SIEM) | 45% | 16% |
| Managed Detection and Response (MDR) | 45% | 15% | |
| Identity | Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) | 70% | 10% |
| Identity Governance | 40% | 17% | |
| Passwordless Authentication | 37% | 21% | |
| Access | Zero Trust Network Architecture (ZTNA) | 32% | 23% |
| Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) | 31% | 17% | |
| Data Security | Cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery | 61% | 11% |
| Cyber liability / data breach insurance | 54% | 12% | |
| Application Security | API security | 39% | 13% |
| Software Composition Analysis (SCA) | 29% | 12% | |
| Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) | 29% | 12% |
Section 5
AI's Pragmatic Surge and the Governance Disconnect
AI adoption has surged dramatically, rising to 52% current use in 2025, up from 23% in 2023. This rapid growth is pragmatic, driven primarily by the immediate availability to lighten the daily task load for employees. The data shows that AI is here to augment human intelligence, not replace it, as organizations are 4x as likely to plan to increase the size of their IT department in 2026 than decrease.
Business Adoption of AI in Last 3 Years
Percentage of Respondents
“Actual AI adoption is far higher than the chart suggests. Once embedded AI features in mainstream productivity and meeting platforms are accounted for, 96% of businesses report using AI.”
Jim Rapoza, Aberdeen VP & Principal Analyst | Information Technology
Huge Variety of AI Use Cases in Play
Organizations are exploring a wide spectrum of AI use cases, with the most popular ones prioritizing immediate efficiency and “low-hanging fruit” in areas focused on automating content creation and software development:
- Writing, optimizing, and/or troubleshooting software and scripts (46%)
- Generating creative content (e.g., marketing, blog posts, images) (42%)
- Automating repetitive, high-volume, or algorithmic tasks (42%)
The Disconnect: Lack of Priority for Data Governance
Despite heavy investment in AI adoption, organizational focus has not yet shifted to the foundational data infrastructure and governance that is critical for complex, high-value AI use cases. This creates a significant foundational gap:
Low Prioritization for Foundational Work: Plans to achieve Data integration and harmonization across disparate systems are low, at only 29%.
The Ethical Gap: The governance needed to ensure ethical and safe deployment is lagging. For instance, few respondents plan on mitigating bias in AI models and data (21%) and establishing governance and accountability frameworks (24%).
This disconnect between high AI adoption and low prioritization of data governance is a potential roadblock, given that the top barrier to AI adoption is difficulty organizing/governing data to enable use cases. Companies that move forward on breaking down data silos and implementing robust data organization and governance frameworks are best positioned for the next wave of high-value capabilities, such as advanced Generative and Agentic AI.
Ethical AI Use Cases Planned within Next 12 months
Percentage of Respondents
Section 6
Conclusion: The Human Mandate for 2026 Technology
The State of IT 2026 confirms a strategic shift: technology spending has moved past speculative digital transformation toward building a foundational core centered on the supporting human worker, which includes infrastructure, devices, and security layers that are mandatory for day-to-day operations.
This strategic maturation is defined by three mandates:
Get the Full State of IT Report eBook
Dive deeper into the 2026 State of IT to uncover exclusive insights on IT spending and tech adoption by region, company size, and industry.
Related Reading
- The 2026 State of IT Report Session from SpiceWorld 2025!
The 2026 State of IT Keynote ● Dec. 22, 2025 - The Great Disconnect: How Tech Pros and Senior Business Leaders See Technology Budgets
Aberdeen Research ● Oct. 29, 2025 - A “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach to corporate AI initiatives effectively casts aside AI governance, ignoring (and therefore accepting) material risks
Aberdeen Research ● Oct. 29, 2025 - Building Trust with Tech Buyers
Spiceworks Ziff Davis ● Sept. 3, 2025 - 2025 State of IT Report
Aberdeen Research ● Nov. 13, 2025
Methodology
In Sept. 2025, Spiceworks and Aberdeen Research surveyed 835 IT professionals representing companies in North America and Europe to surface insights about the evolving IT landscape. IT spend power of these survey respondents represents a net YoY increase from $2.65B to about $2.94B in 2026.
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