Enterprise Spending Methodology

Similar to our 2003 survey, our objectives this year included the investigation of IT end users' plans in terms of their budget allocations, revenue expectations, internal hiring plans, technology adoption, business priorities and interactions with their outsourced IT solution-provider service and VAR communities.

VARBusiness, in partnership with ARC Research, a Cranford, N.J.-based business-intelligence and market research firm, developed both the 2003 and 2004 survey instruments. In order to trend data from 2003 to 2004, the majority of the questions in the 2004 survey remained the same as in the 2003 survey. However, we also enhanced this year's survey to provide additional insight on expected IT expenditures. The 2004 questionnaire was formatted for effective telephone interviewing. ARC Research then collected the market data during a three-week period in January using the survey questionnaire developed.

Suitable survey participants came from a listing of more than 10,000 enterprise-sized IT end users. The sample was selected from the subscriber file of VARBusiness' sister publication, InformationWeek. From this listing, ARC Research made more than 3,600 individual contacts, from which 350 qualified and completed the survey, yielding a margin of error++/-5.2 percent at a 95 percent confidence interval. The 2004 and 2003 survey results were weighted based on employee size to reflect the proportion of enterprise firms within the U.S. market. Survey participants were based on company size, number of employees and outsourcing requirements. The respondent mix included executive-level, such as CIOs, CTOs, CEOs, CFOs, IT management and line-of-business management.