The results of the 2018 Computer Weekly/ TechTarget IT Priorities Survey have been published, showing 2018 is likely to be the year where everything moves to the cloud.

Nearly 2,000 IT decision-makers from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) completed the survey, 243 of whom were in the UK. The results show that companies across the region upgrading and consolidating datacentres to increase efficiency, performance and improve cloud-readiness capabilities.

Datacentre Infrastructure a Priority

29% of respondents (a year-on-year rise of 44%) said that upgrading datacentre infrastructure (including cooling systems, power supply and servers) is their top priority for 2018, while 30% said they would be migrating to Windows Server 2016 over the course of this year.

Other planned deployments experiencing growth in 2018 include flash arrays, with 9% planning a 2018 rollout (up from 6%  in 2017) and storage for virtual environments with 18% planning deployments (up from 11% in 2017).

Increasing Interest in AI and Blockchain

Artificial intelligence and blockchain are starting to become priorities for companies. The survey reports that 18% of businesses in the UK see AI as a priority (up from 8% in 2017), while the figure across EMEA is 16%. Blockchain grew from a 3% to 6% priority in the UK, while across EMEA, it rose from 5% to 10%.

Security is a key focus for many companies, 44% of businesses said they planned to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 in 2018, two years before support for the earlier version officially ends. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is the top security initiative for most companies in 2018, with 55% of organisations planning to implement it in 2018, more than double the figure from 2017. This is closely followed by email security, encryption and endpoint security, which 52% of European organisations say will be introduced this year.

Plans for encryption are up 94% compared to 2017. Investment in endpoint security has also risen sharply, increasing by 68% compared to 2017. As Computer Weekly notes, this is very high, considering the topic was the top priority for most European firms in 2017

IoT Implementation

The survey also revealed that spending on networking is down across-the-board, with IoT infrastructure dropping by 52%. Only 2% of respondents said they planned to implement specific IoT infrastructure and only 1% are planning IoT specific connectivity projects. Could this be a sign that the technology has hit the supposed ‘trough of disillusionment‘ asks CW?

Overall, the survey found that IT budgets are on the increase in 2018, with new spending going on cloud initiatives rather than on-premise IT. Respondents to the survey who said their budgets were decreasing are planning to decrease spend on staff and consulting services.

You can find a more detailed breakdown of the survey results over on Computer Weekly.