Thank heaven (or the cloud) for IT budget growth

Finally, a ray of sunshine for solution providers suffering from lackluster corporate IT budgets. For the first time in three years, companies are reporting an increased budget for technology expenses in 2011, according to a Corporate Executive Board survey that’s set for publication at the end of October.

The survey gathered data from 150 companies and found that budgets for services and consulting are expected to increase to 20% in 2011 from 16% in 2009. In turn, companies will cut back on internal technology staff as more projects are outsourced.

 The survey also revealed that the anticipated 3.3% budget growth is due to new technologies, including cloud computing and data mining, and analytics tools. On the flip side, increased spending on virtual investments also means that funds for hardware will decline as more companies rely on the cloud for data storage.

Many solution providers have seen cloud computing as a somewhat mysterious model, not being sure where they fit in or how to integrate cloud applications and services into their own consulting gigs. But the same technologies that you would provide to your customers on premise – servers, monitoring and reporting tools, I/O and data networking, etc. – can all be provided through the cloud.

When developing your own cloud strategy, you have to first be able to distinguish between the different types of cloud environments (public, private or hybrid), determine which cloud services align with your expertise and finally, make sure you have the hardware and software necessary to support a cloud environment. If you’re still concerned about how cloud computing can affect your hardware sales, check out SearchSystemChannel.com’s Ezine on weighing the potential (or nonexistent) threats of cloud computing.