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May 23, 2023
2023 data is in and Digibee's second annual report Company State Integration Survey, it’s out! We reached out to more than a thousand enterprise IT professionals—from web developers and systems architects to CTOs and CIOs—across North America to understand current integration trends, challenges, and opportunities.
Now we’re diving into some of the key findings with a series of blog posts – this one focuses on IT budgets and the cost of integration.
IT budgets are increasing
Globally, IT budgets continue to grow. Gartner analysts estimate that worldwide IT spending will rise 5.5% this year to reach $4.6 trillion, despite general economic uncertainty. The upward trajectory of enterprise technology budgets is driven by a variety of factors, including:
- Growing concerns about cybersecurity (49%)
- Efforts to improve operational efficiency (46%)
- Improvements in customer experience (42%)
- Adoption of tools such as integration to transform existing processes (41%)
Data from our report indicates that more than half of enterprise IT professionals expect to spend up to 25% of this growing IT budget on integration.
Budget is no longer a major integration challenge
In last year's report, respondents cited budgetary concerns as the main obstacle to their integration efforts. The 2023 report told a very different story – IT costs were not a factor when we asked about integration challenges. Security, dependency on legacy systems, and skills shortages (among other things) displaced IT expense management.
Why the change?
As we mentioned earlier, IT spending is on the rise, driven at least in part by the need to transform existing systems. In short, digital transformation and, relatedly, cloud migration are big business right now.
When legacy systems begin to hamper organizations’ ability to leverage new tools—for efficiency, innovation, security, or customer experience—it makes sense that purse strings start to loosen. Digital transformation spending worldwide continues to climb annually and is on track to reach US$3.4 trillion by 2026 – and because integration plays a critical role in this process, integration budgets are increasing as decision-makers view the cost of digital transformation as a necessity rather than a nice-to-have.
So where is all this money going?
Companies in North America are expected to spend billions (if not trillions) on integration this year. But what exactly are they spending it on?
Our data shows that integration budgets are split fairly evenly across five main categories, with a small amount of spillover into an odd sixth category.
Integration Maintenance
Maintenance accounts for the largest percentage of the integration cost, although only by a small margin. This is not really surprising when you consider that an impressive 98.5% of respondents reported rebuilding at least one integration in the last twelve months.
Training and Staff
The percentage of IT budgets devoted to onboarding training is a point of contention, as it’s one of the few areas where there’s room to tighten the belt. But while some onboarding platforms (like Digibee’s) are intuitive and accessible even to non-developers, others (which we won’t name) require extensive and expensive training and certification.
Qualified IT specialists are not easy to find – a trend that has emerged in recent years and shows no sign of disappearing. As digital transformation and cloud migration become increasingly critical to growth and innovation, recruiting and retaining the staff needed to facilitate these changes becomes a higher priority in IT budgets.
Software and infrastructure
We’ve already discussed how training costs can skyrocket when organizations adopt integration platforms that require special expertise or certification—and that software also comes with licensing fees. The cost of integration tools is often a nonnegotiable cost of digital transformation.
Of course, there are various types of integration There are a number of solutions that businesses can choose from, and prices vary considerably. iPaaS, which uses cloud-based resources to provide platform-independent connections between different resources and systems, can cost significantly less than other tools.
Optimize your IT spending with Digibee's iPaaS
The cost of cloud migration and digital transformation is not set in stone. While IT budgets continue to grow as companies place greater emphasis on technological innovation, there are still ways to optimize your IT spend when it comes to integration.
Digibee's iPaaS offers an affordable alternative to many of the other integration solutions on the market.
- No need for time-consuming or expensive training and certification
- Intuitive visual interface means even non-IT staff can create and maintain integrations
- As-a-service model eliminates costly upfront commitments, with maintenance included in subscription
Need help controlling your digital transformation or cloud migration costs? Schedule an appointment with our teamand let us explain how to leverage Digibee's iPaaS can impact your IT budget.
