Most of us can (vaguely) remember life before COVID-19: business optimism and aggressive purchasing plans for 2020. Six months into the pandemic, how have IT buying plans and practices changed? Two recent research reports provide answers.

The report COVID-19’s Impact on IT: Tech trends before, during and after the crisis from Spiceworks Ziff Davis (SWZD) details how the pandemic has altered the business technology landscape. For example:

• In 2018, only 13% of employees worked remotely most of the time.
• In 2019, “69% of businesses had video conferencing tools such as Zoom and WebEx, but only half used them frequently.”
• At the beginning of 2020, a whopping 88% of companies expected their IT budgets to stay the same or grow this year.
• Since the pandemic hit, 25% of businesses say they will spend less than planned on technology this year, and another 14% are unsure of how budgets will be affected.

The virus caught most enterprises off guard. [Read more…]