What’s Up With E-Biz?

According to survey respondents, in 2000, e-business projects most often comprised less than 10 percent of the end users' IT budgets. But in 2001, 27 percent of respondents say e-business projects will likely comprise 10 to 19 percent of their IT budgets.

If you're looking for companies willing to dedicate 50 percent or more of their IT budgets to e-business initiatives this year, the survey says you should look to companies with fewer than 500 employees.

In 2002, dedicating 10 to 19 percent of IT budgets to e-business projects will still be the most popular range, say 22 percent of the respondents. These will most often be small and midsize businesses.

Those figures are in line with what John Rovegno, executive vice president of operations for Synapse Group, Stamford, Conn., is expecting his company to spend in the near future. "We don't see our spending contracting at all because there is still a lot more work to be done," Rovegno says.

Craig Miller, CTO of Reston, Va.-based Proxicom, predicts substantial increases in spending on basic solutions that can bring clients fast ROI,things like CRM and e-learning.

He also expects large increases in spending on security solutions, which he thinks will double the growth of general IT spending this year.