Essential Guide

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Editor's note

As technology rapidly advances, IT professionals are forced to frequently reprioritize spending and pet projects. In TechTarget's 2018 IT Priorities survey, IT pros shared their top projects, expectations and concerns for this year. Their responses ran the gamut and provide a snapshot of how businesses continue to navigate industry's digital transformation.

The survey was conducted in late 2017 among more than 1,000 North America-based IT professionals. The majority of respondents list their titles as midlevel IT managers, directors/senior IT managers, engineers/programmers/designers and IT staff. The survey found that 2018 IT strategy demands tend to broadly span most data center disciplines, but respondents indicated a variety of specific areas where they expect to concentrate their spending.

In this essential guide, get detailed results and analysis of the survey findings to discover what IT professionals worldwide have on their agendas as part of their 2018 IT strategy.

1Network upgrades on the 2018 tech horizon

The right technology infrastructure is an essential element for the IT department, and continual upgrades and redesigns keep the business running and allow for proper IT service delivery. The tech options to consider when making these changes are certainly not at a minimum, however, and companies must carefully decide what technology should be integrated to best meet their business needs. In this section, learn about survey respondents' 2018 plans for network and server upgrades, and how integrating new tech in these upgrades could go a long way toward determining their success.

2Wide-ranging regulatory and security risk remains a concern

One glance at the tech news page shows how important solid information security and compliance processes have become for modern companies. Whether it is the latest large-scale data breach or the potential implications of new data privacy rules like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, constantly evolving threats and regulations force companies to pay close attention to their investments in governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) processes. In this section, learn how professionals in these fields are coping with these seemingly endless challenges and how some newly developed tools could help them.

3Cloud investments remain a priority

The cloud remains a popular investment for IT: The biggest projected spend for companies is for investments in cloud services, according to the 2018 IT Priorities survey. This goes for companies of all sizes as well: Sixty-one percent of large companies expect to open their wallets for cloud services, with midsize companies (55%) and smaller shops (49%) intending to follow suit. Of course, cloud services is a very broad term that could include several IT technologies or processes. In these articles, learn details and analyses about where cloud investments fit in 2018 IT strategy plans.