Spending Archives - EasySAM https://easysam.co.uk/tag/spending/ Software Asset Management. Simplified. Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:57:21 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.3 https://easysam.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/easysam_icon-60x60.png Spending Archives - EasySAM https://easysam.co.uk/tag/spending/ 32 32 AI spend will jump 49.5% in 2026, says Gartner https://easysam.co.uk/news/ai-spend-will-jump-49-5-in-2026-says-gartner/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:25:00 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=38387 Growth will continue at unprecedented rates until, by 2030, every dollar spent will be an AI dollar, says a Gartner analyst.

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Growth will continue at unprecedented rates until, by 2030, every dollar spent will be an AI dollar, says a Gartner analyst.

Published on 25th September 2026

Worldwide AI spending will increase 49.5% in 2026, to $2.7 trillion, and grow another 36.2% in 2027 as AI usage continues to expand, Gartner predicts in the latest quarterly update to its IT spending forecast.

But there’s been no diversion of money from other areas of IT to feed AI, said Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst John-David Lovelock. CIOs got some net new money for AI back in 2024, and a little in 2025, he said, “so there wasn’t a diversion, and now more of their spending is about rebranding than diversion.”

By 2030, “every dollar is going to be an AI dollar in one way or another,” he said.

Instead of buying just a laptop, companies now buy a laptop with AI chips in it, while enterprise software now has AI embedded in it. And instead of doing a project about business strategy, they now do a project about how AI might change business strategy.

“In one way, it’s kind of rebranding,” he said. “Net new spending is going more towards AI, and existing spending is being transformed towards AI.”

It’s similar with hyperscalers: “The hyperscalers haven’t diverted one dime away from their cloud. So AWS, Google, Microsoft, Meta are all continuing to build out their cloud infrastructure at the same rate they were in 2022.”

The AI buildout “is the largest infrastructure project humanity has ever undertaken,” he observed.

Gartner updates its spending forecasts quarterly. In its latest report, it predicted AI infrastructure spend will grow 51.2% this year, and AI software 60.2%. Spend on AI agents and assistants, which it breaks out separately from other software, is forecast to increase by 77.3%, and AI security spend to almost double.

As AI development platforms prove themselves, Gartner sees spending on them accelerating: It has increased its 2026 growth forecast for them from 28% in its May report to 39%, attributing the change to the development of custom AI applications by enterprises and software and service providers.

AI model providers are seeing a “small but growing opportunity” for domain-specific language models aligned with enterprise use cases, upping the 2026 growth rate for generative AI models to 117%.

Semiconductor surprise

But what surprised Lovelock was the semiconductor spend.

“Semiconductors for the last 30 years has been a nice, easy market to work through,” he said. “Total spending has been very incremental. It’s followed a nice long-term evolutionary curve. Back in 2015, we said it would be about a trillion dollars by 2030, and we got real pushback on that back then, saying we didn’t understand Moore’s law and fabrication and all the rest of it. Well, turns out both myself and the people giving the criticism were wrong, because with AI, chips are now going to push $2 trillion by 2030.”

The culprit is memory.

“We were ready for the run-up in the chips that went into the heart and soul of the servers. However, as the AI servers got more functional, they required more memory and, of course, more storage, which is also memory,” he said.

People often mistake the reason for the substantial rise in memory prices, he said: “It’s very often written that there is a memory shortage, which is not putting the blame or the explanation in the right place. There is a massive over-demand towards memory, and that’s pushed these chip prices incredibly high, and that has spiked that semiconductor spend, now doubling 2030 spend from what we thought it was before AI.”

His message to CIOs is straightforward: “The next two years, next three years, have at least three major transitions in them,” he said. “If you think you know what will happen with AI based on what is happening with AI, you’re wrong. The technology is changing too quickly for anybody to have assurances or certainty on what can be done and at what price point. This is going to be continually on your plate, and your balance between risk and reward has got to be your number one priority.”

AI is driving software spend - make sure it’s driving value too.

With AI software spending set to surge, now is the time to get a clear view of your software estate, identify waste and ensure every licence is delivering value.

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Source

https://www.cio.com/article/4225785/ai-spend-will-jump-49-5-in-2026-says-gartner.html

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]]> How to audit your cloud spend without a FinOps tool https://easysam.co.uk/knowledge-base/how-to-audit-your-cloud-spend-without-a-finops-tool/ Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:34:55 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=38075 Avoid unnecessary spend by using native platform insights and AP data to identify and eliminate wasted SaaS and cloud resources.

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Avoid unnecessary spend by using native platform insights and AP data to identify and eliminate wasted SaaS and cloud resources.

Published on 17th August 2026

For five years, IT was slowly winning the war on cloud waste. Tech pros got better at tagging what they built and shutting off what nobody needed. In Flexera’s annual State of the Cloud survey, the estimated share of infrastructure spend going to waste shrank a little every time. That streak ended in 2025. Wasted IaaS and PaaS spend rose to 29%, the first increase in five years. The survey’s authors state that the cost complexity of AI workloads and the introduction of new PaaS offerings may be contributing factors to the overall increase in costs, particularly regarding AI workloads.

If you run IT at a smaller company, you can guess where your share of that waste hides because it never arrived as one approved line item. More likely, this waste accumulated through a departmental software trial that continued beyond its pilot phase and a virtual machine (VM) that was sized for a peak demand that never materialised.

Enterprise teams can put a FinOps platform and a dedicated analyst on this problem. You can get most of the way there with the cost instruments AWS, Microsoft, and Google already built into their consoles, on the infrastructure side and the subscription side alike. If you approach the job the way you approached a telecom bill before renewal—the target is bigger and messier, but you’ll find that the instincts transfer.

Make sense of the cloud bill first

Your cloud provider probably spreads your month across services, regions, and pricing dimensions. Almost none of the line items carry names a department head would recognise. You won’t get anywhere reading it as-is, but all three platforms include a view that translates the raw feed into something you can question.

In AWS, you can do this in Cost Explorer, grouping the month’s spend by service to see where the money concentrates. Azure keeps the equivalent in the cost analysis view inside Cost Management. On Google Cloud, the built-in billing reports chart spend by project, service, SKU, or location. Consider pulling the last full month and sorting by cost, then working down the top 10 entries until you can say what each one is, which workload it serves, and who would notice if it disappeared. (Fair warning, the first sort may produce results that are a bit startling.)

Once you’re done, put anything you can’t explain on the audit list and work from there.

Where infrastructure waste piles up

As with most audits, low-hanging fruit is your friend, so start there. When a VM is deleted, many of its dependencies may remain, resulting in continued charges for those remnants until they are identified. Three kinds show up on almost every bill.

  • Unattached storage: Disks are the classic culprit. Those volumes are still there months afterward, attached to nothing and still costing you money.
  • Addresses and network leftovers: A reserved public IP with no workload behind it, an idle load balancer, or an orphaned network interface will each appear on the invoice every month until you release it.
  • Snapshots from projects long finished: Backups multiply during migrations, and once a cutover succeeds, nobody goes back to prune what it produced. Storage prices per gigabyte look tiny until the gigabytes are three years deep.

You don’t have to hunt any of this down by hand, thankfully. AWS Compute Optimizer includes idle detection that flags unattached EBS volumes and idle instances. On Azure, the community-built Orphaned Resources workbook pulls that whole category into one dashboard. Google Cloud’s idle VM recommendations automatically run and are free of charge.

After removing the dead weight, you should compare what remains with its usage. Lift-and-shift migrations replicate on-premises specifications in the cloud, and since those servers were sized for peak load, the cloud copy inherits capacity that its application barely uses. Cost Explorer’s rightsizing recommendations identify EC2 instances you can down-size or terminate, and Azure Advisor surfaces idle and underutilised resources as well.

One caveat applies to AWS accounts on the basic tier, since Trusted Advisor’s checks require a paid support plan – Compute Optimizer and Cost Explorer are your free lane. For a steady, predictable workload or two, the better destination may be outside the cloud entirely because cloud repatriation has become a live option for exactly that profile.

Whatever you resize, drop one size and watch for a week. An aggressive cut that causes an outage runs the risk of costing the audit its credibility and setting you back.

Your SaaS stack deserves the same scrutiny

Subscription waste is harder to see than anything on the infrastructure side because it spreads across expense reports and departmental cards. The renewal emails go to whoever signed up first, and the inventory itself becomes the hard part.

Spiceworks community @walsash summed up the problem this way: “In a lot of small/mid-sized companies, ‘SaaS management’ basically means someone manually comparing an HR Excel/CSV with user lists in Google Workspace, Slack, etc.” You’ll probably need to build the list from your accounts payable data and card statements before you open a single admin console because the subscriptions IT never heard about won’t show up anywhere else.

  • Seats nobody uses: Zylo’s 2026 SaaS Management Index, drawn from its platform data, found license utilisation averaging just 54% of purchased seats. That’s right, nearly half of what companies pay for goes unused. Zylo sells the fix, so you may want to keep that in mind. Additionally, it’s important to mention that the percentage of wasted software spending has increased by one point in Flexera’s statistics, and your own dashboards will provide you with your specific figures. The usage reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center are there to spot who barely uses a service and might not need the license. Google Workspace tracks the same signals in its Apps usage report.
  • Pilots on autopilot: Plenty of smaller IT environments have a three-seat pilot auto-renewing on a corporate card with nobody watching, and by year two it can cost more than the tool the team adopted. So, match every recurring software charge in your AP data to a person who’ll claim it. If nobody claims one, it might be because the owner left the company or the tool stopped mattering, and either way you can cancel.
  • Two tools doing one job: AI subscriptions are multiplying this problem fastest, between the consumption-driven creep of usage-billed tools and the AI price increases bundled into suites you already own. A BlackFog study reported by Forbes found 49% of workers use AI tools in ways their employer hasn’t approved. As that piece notes, five employees expensing personal $20-a-month ChatGPT accounts spend the same money as one business account with usage controls and audit logs. Getting buy-in for consolidating those accounts shouldn’t be that hard.

Keep the audit from unwinding

At this point, you can bask in the glow of having saved the company some money. That said, everything you cleaned up will come back within a few quarters if the conditions that produced it stay the same. New tools will likely come on board, too. Gartner projects public cloud spending to grow 21.3% in 2026 as AI demand accelerates.

So, consider doing a quarterly repeat of the whole audit. Even a light one will keep the invoice more readable year-round. You can make continual pruning easier by giving every survivor a tag naming its owner and purpose. Budget alerts in AWS Budgets, Azure Cost Management, and the Google Cloud console can then flag mid-month surprises before the bill lands. Subscription renewal dates deserve a calendar of their own, of course.

As you go, total what you cut and take the number to your next budget conversation. You may or may not get to allocate it to other IT priorities in the short term, but it buys you something better in the long term—credibility the next time you ask for what your team needs.

Is your cloud spend skyrocketing?

Hopefully the advice given in this guide will help - but for a bespoke look at how that spend can be brought back to the ground, why not get the experts in?

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Source

https://www.spiceworks.com/it-networking/how-to-audit-your-cloud-spend-without-a-finops-tool/

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]]> Gartner ups IT spending growth to 13.5% in revised forecast https://easysam.co.uk/news/gartner-ups-it-spending-growth-to-13-5-in-revised-forecast/ Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:12:16 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=37382 The research firm expects 2.7% more growth in global IT spending for 2026 than it did just two months ago, with better than previously projected spending on AI infrastructure leading the way.

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The research firm expects 2.7% more growth in global IT spending for 2026 than it did just two months ago, with better than previously projected spending on AI infrastructure leading the way.

Published on 27th April 2026

Citius, Altius, Fortius. More than a slogan, “Faster, Higher, Stronger Together” is a phrase etched in the minds of many IT decision-makers. Technology is essential. Nobody wants to fall behind. Doing so could mean losing out on many advantages and, consequently, significant business.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that Gartner forecasts global IT spending to reach $6.31 trillion this year, a 13.5% increase compared to 2025 — and nearly 3% more than Gartner forecasted in February, at 10.8% growth.

A sustained push in AI infrastructure, software, and IaaS is key to this growth, according to the research firm. “These shifts are reinforcing a multi‑speed IT market, with hyperscaler purchases and AI‑centric software segments significantly outperforming more traditional categories,” Gartner reported in a statement.

John-David Lovelock, analyst and distinguished vice president at Gartner, underscored that accelerated momentum in AI infrastructure and advanced memory played a significant role in the firm’s growth revision.

“As AI workloads scale, datacenter investment is ramping rapidly, which in turn is driving increased demand for high‑performance compute,” Lovelock said in the statement. “This dynamic is creating meaningful growth opportunities for companies delivering AI‑optimised processors, accelerators, and enabling technologies.”

What will grow the most? Spending on datacenter systems, at 55.8%, to exceed $787 million in 2026.

Supply constraints and strong demand have also resulted in record price increases for high-bandwidth memory, according to Lovelock, as hyperscaler demand drives sharp increases in investments in servers. “These trends collectively make AI infrastructure the most attractive segment for capitalising on the robust expansion in IT spending,” he said.

Those same higher memory prices are impacting device replacement cycles, according to the firm. Device spending is growing, to be sure, but at a lower rate (8.2%) than the IT sector overall.

“Together, these dynamics highlight a widening divergence across IT markets, as AI infrastructure and GenAI software see substantial upward revisions while device growth reflects ongoing cost and pricing pressures,” Lovelock noted.

Are you ramping up your spending as Gartner are suggesting?

And if you are, how much consideration is being given to your SAM practices with this spend? We'd love to hear about your situation.

Get in touch

Source

https://www.cio.com/article/4162831/gartner-has-raised-its-forecast-for-global-it-spending-growth-in-2026-by-nearly-three-percentage-points.html

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Lugon Studio via Vecteezy

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]]> Companies continue to splash out on AI, despite disillusionment with the technology https://easysam.co.uk/news/companies-continue-to-splash-out-on-ai-despite-disillusionment-with-the-technology/ Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:48:08 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=36847 The colossal outlay is against the backdrop of 95% of organisations reporting zero return on investment in generative AI projects.

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The colossal outlay is against the backdrop of 95% of organisations reporting zero return on investment in generative AI projects.

Published on 19th January 2026

Worldwide spending on AI will hit $2.5 trillion in 2026 according to analysts at Gartner, a 44% increase from 2025, and is expected to increase to $3.3 trillion in 2027.

This projected increase comes in spite of enterprises wallowing in the Trough of Disillusionment stage of Gartner’s own hype cycle, defined as a period where “interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver”, this year.

“[AI] will most often be sold to companies by their encumberment software provider rather than bought as part of a new moonshot project,” said David-John Lovelock, distinguished VP analyst at the firm.

“The improved predictability of ROI must occur before AI can truly be scaled up by the business,” Lovelock added.

This issue of ROI – or lack thereof – plus the failure of many AI projects were repeated refrains throughout 2024 and 2025. Research from MIT showed that, in 2025, 95% of organisations reported zero return on investment in generative AI projects.

In terms of where 2026’s AI investment will be made, AI infrastructure gets the lion’s share with an anticipated $1.3 billion of cash being poured into this area, according to Gartner.

This is almost 50% of the total 2026 uplift and nearly twice as much as the next target for investment, AI services ($588.6 million), with AI software coming in a close third place ($452.5 million).

This increasing investment in what Gartner describes as the foundations of AI has already been reflected in the revenue growth among semiconductor manufacturers in 2025.

In separate research, the analyst firm found that semiconductor revenue increased 21% year-over-year in 2025, reaching $793 billion.

The big AI investment winners

Leading the pack was Nvidia, a company that has firmly tied its fortunes to the AI wave, with an estimated $125.7 million in revenue and 15.8% market share.

This was followed by Samsung Electronics ($72.5 million and 9.1% market share) and SK Hynix ($60.6 million and 7.6% market share).

Of the top 10 vendors by revenue, all experienced double-digit growth except Intel, which fell by 3.9%, or just under $2 million.

This pattern is expected to continue in the coming year, according to Rajeev Rajput, senior principal analyst at Gartner.

“AI semiconductors – including processors, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and networking components continued to drive unprecedented growth in the semiconductor market, accounting for nearly one-third of total sales in 2025.

“This domination is set to rise as AI infrastructure spending is forecast to surpass $1.3 trillion in 2026.”

Source

https://www.itpro.com/business/business-strategy/ai-investment-increase-2026-gartner

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]]> Reclaiming Control: strategies to tame unchecked SaaS spending https://easysam.co.uk/knowledge-base/reclaiming-control-strategies-to-tame-unchecked-saas-spending/ Wed, 15 Oct 2025 08:26:17 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=36045 In a volatile economy, the need to wrangle unmanaged SaaS spend and take actionable steps to regain control has never been more important.

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In a volatile economy, the need to wrangle unmanaged SaaS spend and take actionable steps to regain control has never been more important.

Published on 15th October 2025

There’s no denying the impact that the cloud revolution has had on dramatically enhancing flexibility and scalability for businesses. Although overall cloud inefficiencies appear to be decreasing, the use of AI-driven public cloud services is growing rapidly.

For example, usage of data warehouse services—often used to feed AI models—has grown by 76%, according to Flexera’s 2025 “State of the Cloud” report. Meanwhile, GenAI adoption is surging, with 72% of organisations now using these services to some degree, up from 47% in 2024.

Today, SaaS applications have become well-regarded as indispensable tools for empowering teams, driving innovation and business value. While these benefits undeniably bring business advantages, SaaS adoption isn’t without its challenges, and managing costs is at the top of the list.

As organisations increasingly rely on SaaS applications to drive ROI, they often face escalating costs due to various factors like departmental procurement, shadow IT and a lack of centralised oversight. As companies aim to stay afloat amid a volatile economy, CIOs must wrangle unmanaged SaaS spend and, most importantly, take the actionable steps needed to regain control.

Challenges Behind The 'Why' Of Rising SaaS Costs

This year, many CIOs are expecting an approximate 8.9% cost increase for IT products and services, requiring those with stagnant budgets to make difficult decisions about their own IT spending. Organisations are also unsurprisingly continuing to prioritise AI investments, which is driving cost increases for recurring IT spending. As innovation persists, tech budgets will continue to be stretched, making it increasingly important for companies to be sharper and more in tune with their budgets.

A major challenge for CIOs and tech teams is what is known as SaaS sprawl, which is when employees independently acquire SaaS tools without IT or security oversight. This often leads to duplicated efforts, overlapping functionalities and a complex web of subscriptions that’s difficult to manage.

Adding to the problem is shadow IT, where employees adopt unauthorised applications without IT’s knowledge. While these tools may seem convenient, they introduce significant security risks, compliance issues and exacerbate untracked SaaS spending.

For CIOs, understanding the “why” behind rising SaaS costs is key to regaining control, reducing risk and driving smarter, more strategic technology investments. Without clear visibility into what’s driving spend—from redundant tools to shadow IT—organisations risk inefficiency, budget overruns and increased security exposure. By identifying the root causes, CIOs can shift from reactive cost-cutting to proactive optimisation, aligning SaaS investments with long-term business goals.

Three Common Pain Points In The SaaS Management Struggle

Those responsible for managing cloud usage and costs are increasingly broadening their focus beyond public cloud (IaaS/PaaS) to better balance spend, usage and long-term strategy.

According to the Flexera report, 79% of IT professionals now participate in cloud software decisions, with 69% involved in managing SaaS usage and costs and 64% overseeing cloud-based software licenses. Yet despite this expanded oversight, many organisations still struggle with the basics of SaaS management. A key challenge is limited visibility, making it difficult to track which applications are in use, who is using them and what they’re costing the business.

Right now, we’re seeing many organisations face the following critical pain points, which are largely driven by the lack of visibility around areas such as:

  • Overspending on SaaS usage due to unused or underutilised licenses: Lack of visibility into SaaS usage often leads organisations to overspend on unused or underutilised licenses. Overlapping tools and duplicate subscriptions only compound the inefficiency, driving up unnecessary costs.
  • Robust security measures for enterprise-grade software: When sensitive data and personal information are exposed, it escalates the risks of data breaches and non-compliance, potentially exposing businesses to reputational damage, brand denigration and risk of significant financial consequences.
  • Managing compliance, especially in heavily regulated industries: Without the appropriate oversight of SaaS usage, it's difficult to ensure all applications meet data privacy and security requirements, putting organisations at risk of violations and costly penalties.

Identifying these pain points in SaaS management enables organisations to reduce costs, enhance security, improve user satisfaction and streamline operations—all of which are critical for sustainable business growth and competitive advantage.

Unlocking Efficiency With A Holistic SMP

So, what are the best solutions for effectively managing SaaS costs today? While implementing an SMP (SaaS management platform) is no magic bullet, it absolutely serves as a critical first step toward a cost-saving solution.

SMPs offer a centralised solution for discovering, managing and optimising all SaaS applications across an organisation. By leveraging the power of SMPs, organisations will be able to achieve game-changing cost savings outcomes, especially as SaaS environments become even more complex, decentralised and prone to waste without centralised oversight.

An SMP can be leveraged to streamline the following: discovery and visibility, spend management, usage monitoring, security and compliance and, lastly, automation. If your organisation hasn’t implemented an SMP yet, you risk getting left behind and gaining a competitive edge over others. In our fast-paced, digital-first landscape, proactive SaaS management is everything and has quickly become a non-negotiable practice.

In 2025, basic and traditional approaches, like using spreadsheets and emails, to manage SaaS subscriptions just won’t cut it anymore. Today, CIOs are encouraged to embrace a holistic approach to SaaS management and harness the full potential of an SMP and its functionalities.

Source

https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/2025/10/09/reclaiming-control-strategies-to-tame-unchecked-saas-spending/

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]]> 84 percent of enterprises are struggling to manage cloud spending https://easysam.co.uk/news/84-percent-of-enterprises-are-struggling-to-manage-cloud-spending/ Mon, 24 Mar 2025 10:21:00 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=34767 That's based on the responses of 750 technical professionals and executives who were surveyed for Flexera's 2025 State of the Cloud Report.

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That's based on the responses of 750 technical professionals and executives who were surveyed for Flexera's 2025 State of the Cloud Report.

Published on 24th March 2025

With cloud spending expected to increase by 28 percent in the coming year, a new poll of over 750 technical professionals and executive leaders worldwide finds that 84 percent see managing cloud spend as their top challenge.

The study from Flexera shows 33 percent of organisations are spending more than $12 million annually on the public cloud alone partly driven by AI adoption. With cloud budgets already exceeding limits by 17 percent, organisations are increasingly turning to managed service providers (60 percent) and expanding use of their FinOps teams to regain control over spending (59 percent).

While estimated wasted cloud spend is falling, the adoption of AI-related public cloud services is rising. In addition to a surge in the use of data warehouse services (76 percent) — often leveraged to feed AI models — generative AI public cloud service use is booming with 72 percent of organisations reportedly using the technology either extensively or sparingly, as compared to 47 percent in 2024.

“AI is in its prime with no indication of losing momentum,” says Jay Litkey, senior vice president of cloud and FinOps at Flexera and governing board member at the FinOps Foundation. “I suspect we’ll see further acceleration of AI use as more organisations embrace their own AI investments and technology vendors introduce agentic AI into their existing toolsets. To stay on budget and accurately forecast for future needs, organisations need to fine-tune how to track and manage their cloud spend and use with FinOps now — or risk a significantly wasted investment.”

Some organisations are moving their workloads back to non-cloud environments (their own datacenters and/or co-located/hosted environments). While this is beginning to happen, only a minority (21 percent) of cloud workloads have currently been repatriated.

Sustainability is a factor too, 57 percent of respondents report they have, or plan to have, a defined sustainability initiative in place within a year, including carbon footprint tracking of cloud use. However, ​saving money is still top of mind given 57 percent saying cost optimisation takes priority over sustainability.

The 2025 State of the Cloud report is available from the Flexera site.

Source

https://betanews.com/2025/03/19/84-percent-of-enterprises-are-struggling-to-manage-cloud-spending/

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]]> Replacement of NHS Oracle finance system delayed again https://easysam.co.uk/news/replacement-of-the-nhss-oracle-finance-system-delayed-again/ Tue, 18 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=34438 Already three years late, NHS England have confirmed that a revised go-live date of April 2024 had been missed.

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Already three years late, NHS England have confirmed that a revised go-live date of April 2024 had been missed.

Published on 18th February 2025

The UK’s largest NHS management body has postponed the replacement of its aging Oracle finance system again following more than three years of delays.

The Integrated Single Financial Environment (ISFE) processes around £170 billion ($211 billion) in health spending every year for NHS England, which is responsible for running the health service in England.

Plans to upgrade the Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 system have been afoot since 2018, when the quango under the Department of Health and Social Care said the replacement would go live in April 2021.

An NHS England spokesperson confirmed that a revised go-live date of April 2024 had been missed.

“A decision was taken to extend the planning and testing for this highly complex critical national infrastructure and a revised launch date in 2025 for the new system will be communicated shortly,” they said.

“The current system and service continue to operate as normal and we remain committed to the successful delivery of this next-generation national finance system, ensuring that services, the system, and users are operationally ready for its arrival.”

In its annual report for 2023-24, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, a UK government projects watchdog, said NHS England’s project to upgrade ISFE had been rated red, meaning “successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable.”

“The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed,” said the report published last month.

The IPA report said the new finance system would support the NHS England Group of organizations, consisting of 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), four Commissioning Support Units (CSUs), NHS England, and a provider organization with annual funding of £170 billion.

The data published with the IPA report said: “Following recommendations from a Red Gate 0 report in February 2024, an action plan is under development and the program is undergoing a re-planning exercise to determine a new go-live date.”

Data from the 2020-21 IPA report said NHS England had planned to go live with the system in April 2024.

In December 2022, NHS England awarded the £108 million ($134 million) ISFE contract – without competition – to the incumbent supplier, NHS Shared Business Services, a joint venture between the NHS and French outsourcer Sopra Steria.

The procurement process began in 2018, when a prior information notice (PIN), designed to gather intelligence from suppliers before the formal competition started, priced the project at £200 million ($248 million) and said that a contract notice would be published by March 18, 2019.

In April 2021, NHS England was forced to extend the contract with NHS Shared Business Services for the ISFE to accommodate delays to the procurement, at a cost of £59.2 million ($73.3 million).

“The ISFE re-procurement project is a large and complex project which will deliver a replacement for the current service,” the procurement document said. “During the planning stages for the re-procurement, it was identified that short-term uncertainties regarding Group structure posed significant challenges to finalising a tender specification during 2019 with a view to implementing a replacement service by April 2021. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that the project team and other key colleagues have had to focus their resources on keeping critical business processes running and work on the procurement of the new contract has inevitably been delayed.”

NHS England decided to go to market for an HR and payroll system in a separate £2 billion ($2.48 billion) competition, which it launched in August 2021. That month, NHS England missed a deadline in the procurement of the ISFE system.

In the meantime, NHS England decided to go to market for a separate HR system and a new electronic staff records system in a procurement that could be worth up to £1.7 billion ($2.1 billion).

The ISFE runs on Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 and is expected to migrate to Oracle Fusion Cloud Financials. With the new system, NHS England anticipates a new cloud-based finance service that is capable of integrating the ERP platform with technologies and automated processes to exploit the “unique benefits of cloud-based services.”

Source

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/11/nhs_finance_system_delayed/

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]]> Why is Gartner forecasting such huge growth for IT in 2025? https://easysam.co.uk/news/why-is-gartner-forecasting-such-huge-growth-for-it-in-2025/ Fri, 24 Jan 2025 11:45:21 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=34279 The research and consultancy firm predicts that investment in IT will grow by 9.8% in 2025 - thanks to demand for Gen AI technology.

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The research and consultancy firm predicts that investment in IT will grow by 9.8% in 2025 - thanks to demand for Gen AI technology.

Published on 24th January 2025

According to Gartner, the US-based technological research and consultancy firm, global spending in the IT sector is set to reach US$5.61tn in 2025, shooting up 9.8% increase from 2024.

While the figure indicates significant growth, the report highlights a nuanced landscape, particularly with how Chief Information Officers (CIOs) plan to allocate their expanded budgets.

John Lovelock, Gartner’s Chief Forecaster, noted that much of the increase will serve to counterbalance escalating prices in recurrent spending categories. In other words, as regularly used products and services become more expensive, corporate budgets are increasing to accommodate.

“While budgets for CIOs are increasing, a significant portion will merely offset price increases within their recurrent spending,” John explains. “This is that, in 2025, nominal spending versus real IT spending will be skewed, with price hikes meaning absorbing some or all of budget growth.”

In particular, Gen AI programmes are projected to spike in price and demand.

Generative AI's indirect influence on spending

In 2025, Gen AI will continue to shape the IT sector’s trajectory, albeit in more direct ways than it has done previously.

Spending in areas such as data centre systems, devices and software is expected to experience double-digit growth, with hardware upgrades serving as a primary driver.

Data centre systems are expected to see the sharpest rise, surging by 23.2% to US$405.5bn in 2025, while software spending is set to grow by 14.2% to US$1.25tn.

However, John tempered expectations about the immediate impact of Gen AI investments. “Gen AI is sliding toward the trough of disillusionment,” he says, “which reflects CIOs’ declining expectations for Gen AI, but not their spending on this technology.”

While consumers and enterprises alike will purchase AI-enabled devices such as PCs, tablets, and mobile phones, these purchases are unlikely to be driven primarily by Gen AI functionality due to the lack of compelling applications.

AI-optimised servers are emerging as a standout area, with spending expected to double that of traditional servers in 2025, reaching US$202bn.

“IT services companies and hyperscalers account for over 70% of spending in 2025,” John says.

“By 2028, hyperscalers will operate US$1tn worth of AI-optimised servers, but not within their traditional business model or IaaS market. Hyperscalers are pivoting to be part of the oligopoly AI model market.”

How price pressures are reshaping budgets

CIOs face the dual challenge of navigating inflationary pressures and managing operational demands, which are reflected in the forecast’s segment-specific growth projections.

Devices, for instance, are expected to see a 10.4% rise in spending to US$810.2bn, driven in part by necessary upgrades rather than discretionary enhancements.

John’s projections point to a cautious optimism among technology leaders. “The new AI-ready PCs do not yet have ‘must-have’ applications that use the hardware,” he said, illustrating the current gap between technological potential and practical utility.

As enterprises await breakthroughs in functionality, much of the immediate spending will centre on maintaining operational efficiency and addressing price hikes.

The role of hyperscalers and AI in reshaping markets

Hyperscalers – companies specialising in massive-scale cloud services – are increasingly positioned as key players in the evolving IT landscape.

With their anticipated US$1tn investment in AI-optimised servers by 2028, these firms are set to transition beyond traditional infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) models into more specialised AI ecosystems.

This shift aligns with broader market trends that favour concentrated investment in advanced computing resources.

Gartner’s highlights the importance of these developments for understanding the future direction of IT spending, particularly in terms of how major players adapt their business models to remain competitive.

Methodology and market insights

Gartner’s IT spending forecasts are built on a comprehensive analysis of sales data from over a thousand vendors across the spectrum of IT products and services.

This rigorous approach enables the firm to deliver nuanced insights into market dynamics and provide guidance to CIOs navigating an increasingly complex technological environment.

These forecasts offer a critical lens through which to examine the interplay of emerging technologies, economic pressures and strategic priorities in the global IT market.

“Understanding the broader spending context is essential for CIOs aiming to align their budgets with both current needs and future opportunities,” says John.

Source

https://technologymagazine.com/articles/why-is-gartner-forecasting-such-huge-growth-for-it-in-2025

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]]> IT leaders reshape 2025 spending around AI despite cost concerns https://easysam.co.uk/news/it-leaders-reshape-2025-spending-around-ai-despite-cost-concerns/ Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:15:00 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=33768 The new Flexera survey also found that OpenAI joined Microsoft, Google and AWS as a top priority software vendor for the first time this year.

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The new Flexera survey also found that OpenAI joined Microsoft, Google and AWS as a top priority software vendor for the first time this year.

Published on 19th November 2024

  • Enterprise IT leaders are reshaping investment priorities around AI despite the technology’s hefty price tag, according to a new Flexera report. The IT asset management and FinOps solution provider surveyed 800 IT executives about their 2025 priorities.
  • While 71% of respondents acknowledged cloud spend weighs heavily on their IT budget, nearly half said AI implementation was their primary focus next year, an 11 percentage point jump from 2024. Reducing IT costs and managing security risks were the next two priorities, cited by 27% and 25% of respondents, respectively.
  • “Artificial intelligence seems to pose the biggest potential gains in the short- and long-term,” Conal Gallagher, CIO at Flexera, said. “There’s an extraordinary expense required of AI projects, creating an even greater sense of urgency to not only understand the impact of the investment but to quickly demonstrate returns that advance core business objectives.”

The race to keep pace with advances in AI ran headlong into the perennial push to keep IT spending in check. As C-suites eyed the technology’s business potential, enterprise cloud bills spiked by as much as 30% year over year, according to a Vanson Bourne report commissioned by Tangoe.

While returns on generative AI investments have yet to materialize and analysts expect nearly one-third of projects to be abandoned after the pilot phase by next year, enterprises remain undeterred.

Vendors are bullish, too. Software companies have been loading up their products with generative AI-powered features, including natural-language chatbots, coding assistants and autonomous agents. The top three cloud providers — AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud — are already enjoying the spoils of a spending boom, as enterprises turn to hyperscaler platforms to modernize their data and onboard AI capabilities.

The trend is reflected in a shift among the leading business solution providers.

Microsoft, an enterprise software powerhouse and early purveyor of generative AI tools, remained the top vendor, cited by nearly two-thirds of Flexera respondents as the provider that consumes the largest segment of their IT budget. However, Google rose to second, at nearly 50%, followed by AWS and, for the first time in Flexera’s annual report, ChatGPT creator OpenAI, at 38% and 37% respectively.

By contrast, Microsoft was followed by AWS, Oracle, SAP and Salesforce in the top five technology vendors in a similar survey Flexera conducted in October 2023.

“Although many of the Big Five tech companies have been investing in AI, Microsoft has been especially aggressive,” Flexera said in the report. “Their partnerships, such as with OpenAI, and integrations across products like Copilot have helped to solidify their position at the forefront of the AI game.”

The three hyperscalers poured tens of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure to satisfy surges in compute consumption throughout the year. That pattern is expected to continue into 2025, with AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud planning to increase capital expenditures of data center buildouts.

Source

https://www.ciodive.com/news/generaitive-ai-cloud-spending-increases-openAI/732856/

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]]> Gartner projects major IT spending increases for 2025 https://easysam.co.uk/news/gartner-projects-major-it-spending-increases-for-2025/ Fri, 25 Oct 2024 12:07:17 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=33615 An estimated global spend of more than $5.7 trillion will be driven by factors like AI, price increases and COVID-era device replacements.

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An estimated global spend of more than $5.7 trillion will be driven by factors like AI, price increases and COVID-era device replacements.

Published on 25th October 2024

Gartner is projecting worldwide IT spending to jump by 9.3% in 2025, one of the largest percentage increases in this century, and it’s only partially driven by AI.

Gartner’s new 2025 IT spending projection, of $5.75 trillion, builds on its prediction of an 8.2% growth this year, with data center spending increasing by nearly 35% in 2024 in anticipation of generative AI infrastructure needs.

Data center spending will increase again by 15.5% in 2025, but software spending — four times larger than the data center segment — will grow by 14% next year, to $1.24 trillion, Gartner projects. The software spending increases will be driven by several factors, including price increases, expanding license bases, and some AI investments, says John Lovelock, distinguished vice president analyst at Gartner.

“We have companies trying to build out the data centers that will run gen AI and trying to train AI,” he says. “Next year, that spending is not going away. The tech companies are still having to run flat out.”

By 2026, hyperscalers will have spent more on AI-optimized servers than they will have spent on any other server until then, Lovelock predicts. This spending on AI infrastructure may be confusing to investors, who won’t see a direct line to increased sales because much of the hyperscaler AI investment will focus on internal uses, he says.

“Generative AI is likely to confuse the capital investor as much as any technology ever has,” he adds.

Free the AI

At the same time, most organizations will spend a small percentage of their IT budgets on gen AI software deployments, Lovelock says. In some cases, the AI add-ons will be subscription models, like Microsoft Copilot, and sometimes, they will be free, like Salesforce Einstein, he says.

In many cases, CIOs and other IT leaders have moved past the peak expectations about what gen AI can do for their organizations and are headed into more realistic ideas about the future of the technology, Lovelock adds.

“The expectation CIOs have for what generative AI can do for them will continue to drop all of next year,” he says. “This year, they did POCs, but it didn’t work out. The key message was, ‘Pace yourself.’”

While AI projects will continue beyond 2025, many organizations’ software spending will be driven more by other enterprise needs like CRM and cloud computing, Lovelock says.

Forrester also recently predicted that 2025 would see a shift in AI strategies, away from experimentation and toward near-term bottom-line gains.

Device replacement cycle

In addition to large percentage increases in the data center and software segments in 2025, Gartner is predicting a 9.5% growth in device spending. Device spending, which will be more than double the size of data center spending, will largely be driven by replacements for the laptops, mobile phones, tablets and other hardware purchased during the work-from-home, study-from-home, entertain-at-home era of 2020 and 2021, Lovelock says.

Even though many device makers are pushing hard for customers to buy AI-enabled products, the market hasn’t yet developed, he adds. Still, after 2028, it will be difficult to buy a device that isn’t AI optimized.

“The buying cycle amongst consumers hasn’t really changed,” he says. “They go and determine how much money they have to buy one of these devices, and then they get the best device they can for that money.”

Spending on advanced IT

Some business and IT leaders say they also anticipate IT spending increases during 2025.

TRECIG, a cybersecurity and IT consulting firm, will spend more on IT in 2025 as it invests more in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud computing, says Roy Rucker Sr., CEO and president there. These advanced technologies will be “crucial for maintaining a competitive edge, improving operational efficiency, and enhancing the customer experience,” he says.

The company also plans to increase spending on cybersecurity tools and personnel, he adds, and it will focus more resources on advanced analytics, data management, and storage solutions.

Although Rucker raises concerns about the global economy and rising technology costs, he says many IT spending increases will be necessary.

“The rapid accumulation of data requires more sophisticated data management and analytics solutions, driving up costs in storage and processing,” he says. “These areas of spending are not just responses to current trends but are strategic investments that will foster long-term innovation, resilience, and competitive advantage.”

Global IT and outsourcing firm Computer Generated Solutions doesn’t anticipate a major increase in IT spending in 2025, says John Samuel, global CIO. The company will still prioritize IT innovation, however.

“We’re consistently evaluating our technology needs to ensure our platforms are efficient, secure, and scalable,” he says. “Our approach is focused on maximizing the impact of existing IT resources and selectively investing in technologies that directly align with client outcomes and long-term growth.”

Samuel agrees with Gartner’s projections, however. There’s a broader market trend of increased investment, including spending on AI and automation, he says.

“At CGS, we’ve seen growing demand from clients for AI-driven solutions that address complex technology challenges, streamline workflows, and create more personalized customer experiences,” he says. “This increased focus on AI is driven by its proven ability to accelerate decision-making, improve accuracy in forecasting, and support scalable growth initiatives.”

Source

https://www.cio.com/article/3587053/gartner-projects-major-it-spending-increases-for-2025.html

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