IT budgets spread across many groups within organizations, creating visibility issues for IT decision-makers: Survey

IT budgets are spread across many groups within organizations, making it increasingly difficult for IT decision-makers to maintain visibility into where and how their IT budgets are being spent, according to Rackspace Technology’s survey, titled Technology Budgets: Managing Shifting Priorities. The survey examines the proliferation of IT budget management across organizations.

The findings indicate that many organizations are not properly governing and optimizing costs. The survey finds that 50% of IT decision-makers lack a basic understanding of what cloud cost governance and cloud cost optimization are, and how they are different. Businesses in this category are at risk of cloud sprawl.

Across the board, leaders recognize the value in investing, tracking, and managing IT spend but finding someone with the expertise to do this effectively is a challenge. 99% of IT decision-makers surveyed reported having a documented IT budget and dedicated resources to manage IT spend, and yet almost half of those surveyed do not feel these resources are skilled enough to be effective.  

Cost management in turbulent times: The COVID-19 effect

Additionally, COVID-19 has taken an already difficult task and increased the complexity significantly, with respondents reporting the need to address a wide array of new technology challenges. 78% of decision-makers report new concerns around budget or cost in the last three months, with 43% reporting concern over being unable to fund planned projects.

Also, businesses report a 59% increase in spend on technologies to support remote working (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), productivity, video conferencing/collaboration, etc.), which required shifting budget away from planned initiatives and toward obtaining the technology necessary to keep the business running. As different business units seek to quickly adopt tools to maintain business continuity, the investment in other IT priorities can get lost in the shuffle and go untraced.

“Many businesses have found out the hard way in 2020 that their IT systems, resources and spend tracking weren’t ready for COVID,” said Jeff DeVerter, Chief Technology Officer – Solutions at Rackspace Technology. “With a 59% increase spend on IT tools, businesses have been forced to adapt quickly to a changing environment which is why we designed the Cloud Optimization solution, to provide customers with an end-to-end solution to help them optimize their cloud workloads for cost and performance.”

Through the new Cloud Optimization Solution, Rackspace Technology provides expertise and guidance to help customers address cost and performance optimization at each step of their cloud journey, which enables them to save money, improve performance, and gain a team of highly specialized experts to focus on their cloud optimization initiatives. Rackspace Technology’s certified cloud experts take a collaborative and flexible approach with each engagement, with the flexibility to adapt quickly to overcome any new challenges and ensure the success of each project.

“By choosing Rackspace Technology, clients will gain access to an industry-leading team of multicloud experts that they can rely on for unbiased guidance,” said Matt Stoyka, Chief Solutions Officer at Rackspace Technology. “A team of experts is available 24x7x365 to help them optimize their cloud workloads for cost and performance so that they can focus on what’s important – their business.”

“By working with Rackspace Technology to modernize and optimize our legacy IT landscape, we were able to realize 45% cost savings and improve performance by 40% across the board,” said Scott Strickland, EVP and CIO, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. “Rackspace helped us get out of the data center business and design and adopt a multicloud environment customized to meet our performance and cost savings goals. In working with Rackspace, we realized these guys and gals really know what they’re talking about. It’s not just something they put on the tin here. They’ve actually executed this before.”