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IT spending will be flat to modestly increasing in the coming year.

The breakdown of plans for IT spending in the coming year looks a lot like it has for the past three years. If there is a dominant trend, it is that the biggest group will hold spending flat, and the next largest group will make modest increases. Just under half say they will spend about the same, a bit more than one-third say they will spend a little more and 7 percent plan to spend a little less, resulting in a modest increase overall.

Outsourcing continues to be viewed as successful.

Payroll remains the most often outsourced activity, reported by almost 60 percent of respondents. More than one-quarter say they have outsourced their IT, making it a distant second, but still well ahead of other areas such as production, logistics, and human resources. As in previous years, the report card on outsourcing produced very good grades. Almost 90 percent of respondents that have outsourced some activity say it has been moderately or highly successful.

Public companies saw little change in the cost of SOX compliance.

This has not changed from last year, and part of the reason companies have not been able to reduce compliance costs is also unchanged: Most financial systems environments continue to be fragmented, especially in the largest firms. While about 90 percent of respondents indicate that they are working on their systems integration issues, clearly most have a long way to go before they achieve a unified information environment. For those who are pursuing ERP as their approach to addressing systems integration issues, the good news is that about three-fourths of the completed implementations were viewed as successful.

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