Finance sector ramps up IT spend

Released 31/10/2011

Companies continue to invest in computing efficiency despite tight budgets

A recent report from the CBI has shown that in the year ahead, finance firms are planning to invest in IT, despite scaling back in other areas of spending due to the economic climate.

According to the Global Cloud Survey from KPMG this month, IT investment is expected to skyrocket in 2012, with 81% of businesses either planning, in early or advanced stages of experimentation, or already have fully adopted cloud computing.

Over the last few months, a number of challenges have arisen in the finance sector that have affected confidence. Volatility both in Europe and elsewhere over the summer has created a turbulent backdrop against which, the pace of growth continued to slow in the last quarter.

Growth is expected to contract over the next quarter but despite this, companies operating in areas such as building societies and finance houses are planning to increase their IT spend to add value, efficiency and retain customers in the long term.

In the face of a tough economy, Andrew Gilbert, MD at UK data centre and communications firm Node4 has grown his company to a turnover of £11 million in seven years and puts the performance down to cloud computing and the growing realisation that data centres (infrastructure at the back-end of cloud computing) are essential - making it the fastest growing area of technology.

Gilbert said: "As companies endeavour to survive the recession they increasingly look at what is essential and what is not. IT has become part of the very fabric of modern business infrastructure within the finance sector and with cloud computing offering significant savings whilst also delivering improvements in efficiencies, its adoption has received a significant boost in the current economic climate."

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