More than half of the Philippines’ chief information officers expect their IT budgets to increase this year. Of those who anticipate an increase, close to half expect a 20% to 40% hike.
However, while most forecast an increase, half indicated that budget constraints will be their biggest challenge for the rest of the year. Other challenges include IT security (35%) and alignment of IT with the business (26%).
These are some of the results of UpgradeMag.com‘s annual Next Wave survey on the Philippine Corporate IT User Industry. Twenty-three CIOs from across all industries where polled for the study.
The study, conducted by UpgradeMag.com‘s Research Unit, also found that 65% of CIOs plan to upgrade their company’s IT infrastructure. The top three technologies in the pipeline include security (40%), hardware upgrade (27%), and disaster recovery (20%) and networking (20%).
Hiring intentions and salary outlook
The survey, carried out during the first half of the year via telephone, also revealed that the majority of CIOs do not plan to augment their IT manpower. Only 25% intend to hire more IT staff this year.
Those hiring will be looking to recruit regular employees. The top four skills CIOs are looking for are programming/app development (43%), cloud computing (30%), security (26%), and networking (22%).
“If we pursue cloud computing in the future, we will be needing cloud computing skills,” Rommel Apelera, IT Manager, Philippine Fire and Marine Insurance Corp., told UpgradeMag.com.
Instead of hiring more IT professionals, close to half (48%) of the CIO respondents indicated they will implement a salary increase. Of those who plan to implement a raise, 46% said the increase will be about 10%.
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