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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways
- Spiceworks gave a sneak peek of its 2026 State of IT report.
- IT jobs and investments amusement growth.
- Some skills tin assistance marque you a much charismatic IT pro.
IT professionals play a important relation successful supporting the technological advancements of organizations, arsenic frontier technologies proceed to germinate and alteration the scenery of galore industries. As a result, their roles are increasing successful demand, adjacent with the emergence of AI.
On Wednesday, Spiceworks previewed its 2026 State of IT study during a league astatine its annual SpiceWorld conference in Austin, Texas. The 14th yearly report, conducted by Aberdeen Research, surveys implicit 800 IT professionals from tiny and mean companies arsenic good arsenic enterprises to stitchery insights into the latest trends successful the IT space. The cardinal trends showed it's a bully twelvemonth for IT professionals.
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"Technology is evolving, truthful the quality broadside of it has to evolve," said Peter Tsai, Head of Technology Insights, Spiceworks. "Overall, there's a affirmative outlook for IT, but you bash request to germinate your skills."
IT careers
The emergence of progressively intelligent AI has raised wide interest astir its imaginable to regenerate quality jobs. That fearfulness is heightened successful the tech manufacture owed to the precocious competency of AI tools successful performing coding-related tasks.
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However, arsenic highlighted successful the session, information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics amusement a 9% projected maturation successful machine and IT occupations from 2024 to 2034, compared to a 3% maturation for each occupations. Furthermore, the aforesaid information amusement that the 2024 median wage for machine and IT occupations is doubly that of the median wage for each different occupations.
Yet astir respondents said they find it hard to prosecute skilled IT talent. The findings from the 2026 Spiceworks State of IT study connection penetration into the circumstantial skills that substance astir to IT professionals. There was overwhelming statement amongst the professionals surveyed astir the value of cybersecurity skills, with 92% believing that cybersecurity skills are crucial.
"If you privation to beforehand your career, cybersecurity skills tin surely assistance you there," added Tsai.
The continuous summation successful AI initiatives besides impacts which skills professionals find astir valuable. Among the respondents, 63% judge AI prompting skills are important, which is simply a 53% summation from past year. The respondent's assurance successful their abilities is besides increasing, with 49% reporting assurance compared to 42% past year.
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Some of the apical AI usage cases see writing, optimizing, and/or troubleshooting bundle and scripts (46%), generating originative contented (42%), and automating repetitive, high-volume, oregon algorithmic tasks (42%).
IT spending
It's not conscionable IT vocation prospects that are looking bright, but besides the wide superior being invested successful the space. The IT fund is projected to summation 11% year-over-year (YoY) from 2025, representing a important boost, and 55% of organizations program to summation their IT budgets.
The study besides had insights into what is driving the YoY increases, with the starring crushed being cybersecurity/compliance. This year, cybersecurity accounted for 13% (median) of IT Computing Infrastructure, up from 11.2% past year.
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"This is beauteous good, information is yet getting the attraction it deserves, and radical person fought for 20 years," said Derek Brink, VP and Research Fellow, Aberdeen Strategy & Research.
Out of the emerging technologies, 52% of businesses person implemented AI, doubly arsenic overmuch arsenic successful 2024. Furthermore, astir 4 retired of 5 respondents program to instrumentality astatine slightest 1 AI-related inaugural wrong the adjacent 12 months, with the median fig of existent AI initiatives ranging from 1 (5th percentile) to 17 (95th percentile), astatine a median of 7.
This translates to much investments being funneled into AI, with AI initiatives besides being listed among the apical investments. The information revealed that AI Software (on-premises and cloud-based) accounted for 2.7% (median) of IT Computing Infrastructure spending.
While this fig whitethorn look low, it does not relationship for the carnal infrastructure required for AI-related systems, including servers, storage, and networking. Brink speculates that, including those different factors, that whitethorn triple, quadruple, oregon adjacent quintuple the share, which would spot AI walk precise adjacent to cybersecurity's share.
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When asked much broadly astir spending connected AI, 42% of respondents reported an summation successful AI spending. This means that 58% of businesses are not going to increase, oregon whitethorn adjacent decrease, their AI spending, and, according to Jim Rapoza, VP & Principal Analyst astatine Aberdeen Strategy & Research, this suggests concerns astir a deficiency of ROI.
"To accidental 58% of businesses are not going to increase, oregon possibly adjacent alteration their AI spend, that brings successful the position that determination are a batch of businesses that started AI, and possibly they're not. Seeing the returns close now, and they're not going to support investing until they commencement seeing those returns."
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