The ETR Macro Views Survey consistently tracks and updates core trends like budget growth, spending priorities, and organizational trends. The latest iteration was conducted from December 3, 2024 to January 2, 2025, gathering responses from 1,835 technology leaders with strong representation from Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies. 26% of the respondents held C-suite level and 51% at VP/Director level. Larger organizations accounted for 57% of respondents.

Key Highlights:

Spend

IT spending increased by 3.9% in 2024 and is expected to grow 5.3% in 2025, with C-suite respondents expecting even higher growth, at 6.1% for 2025. Only 15% of respondents plan to reduce IT spending, mainly by cutting staffing, albeit at much lower rates than prior surveys.

While coming off a slightly lower base, IT spend changes estimates among Fortune 500 and Global 2000 organizations are showing more prominent improvements vs. three months ago (+0.9 and +0.7 percentage points, respectively). IT spend growth continues to be highest among Small and Midsize organizations. Financials/Insurance organizations indicated the strongest survey-over-survey increase in 2025 spending projections at +1.5 percentage points and also predict the highest overall spend growth, at 6.2%. CxO respondents project 6.1% year-over-year growth, which is slightly lower than their initial projections of 6.4%, but notably higher than the total respondent average (5.3%) and their VP/Director and Practitioner counterparts (4.8%).

Acceleration of new projects continues to be the most frequently cited method for achieving the increase in IT spend, and by a slightly larger margin than previously; expansion of cloud resources remains the clear second option.

Just 6% indicate their increase in IT spend will be primarily driven by adopting new vendors, as compared to 12% citing adoption of new capabilities from existing vendors and 7% citing expanding footprint of existing vendors to new users or business units.

In this survey iteration, only 15% of total respondents indicated plans to decrease spend (by 1% or less) in CY2025. Among those respondents, reducing staffing costs was cited materially less frequently than previous polling windows, though holds onto its lead as the most cited, by a small margin. The next most frequently cited methods were delaying/stopping new projects and reducing hardware/capex spending, followed closely by consolidation of redundant vendors across business units. Of note, reducing excess cloud resources and optimizing SaaS licensing both saw materially fewer citations than in prior periods.

IT department headcount change is seeing positive momentum, with the average change at +2.2% over the next 6 months, an increase of 0.7 percentage points vs. the October polling window. Although not shown here, the data filtering tool on ETR’s platform shows that the improving headcount trends are shared among Global 2000 accounts as well, having reversed the -0.2% decline to a +0.5% increase. In addition, the C-Suite respondents have even more robust headcount projections at 3.4% growth.

Outsourced services

On average, respondents indicated Outsourced services pricing has increased +3.0% in the past 6 months, as compared to 7 to 12 months ago (using the midpoint of listed ranges); this is stable vs. the July and October 2024 data. 53% of respondents indicated that vendors have raised pricing, with 20% citing a magnitude of 6% or greater. 22% of respondents indicated pricing has remained flat, with another 8% indicating vendors have lowered prices.

Overall Outsourced services spend is now anticipated to grow +2.4% in 2025 vs 2024 (spend-weighted average), a decline of 0.4 percentage points from three months ago. This number is below the average expected price increase for Outsourced services. 36% of respondents anticipate increasing Outsourced services spend by 1% or more, vs. 21% anticipating a decrease in Outsourced services spend by 1% or worse; 16% anticipate increasing Outsourced services spend by 10% or more.

Hardware

On average, respondents indicated Hardware pricing has increased +3.2% in the past 6 months, as compared to 7 to 12 months ago (using the midpoint of listed ranges), which is an acceleration vs. the October 2024 data. 57% of respondents indicated that vendors have raised pricing, with 22% citing a magnitude of 6% or greater.

18% of respondents indicated pricing has remained flat, with another 11% indicating vendors have lowered prices.

Overall Hardware spend is anticipated to grow +3.0% in 2025 vs 2024 (spend-weighted average), a 1.0 percentage point increase from the October estimates.

44% of respondents anticipate increasing Hardware spend by 1% or more vs. 20% anticipating a decrease in Hardware spend by 1% or worse; 19% anticipate increasing Hardware spend by 10% or more.

Cloud (IaaS, PaaS)

On average, respondents indicated Cloud (IaaS, PaaS) pricing has increased +2.9% in the past 6 months, as compared to 7 to 12 months ago (using the midpoint of listed ranges), a continued increase vs. the July and October 2024 data. 56% of respondents indicated that vendors have raised pricing, with 18% citing a magnitude of 6% or greater. 23% of respondents indicated pricing has remained flat, with another 8% indicating vendors have lowered prices.

Overall Cloud (IaaS, PaaS) spend is anticipated to grow +9.5% in 2025 vs 2024 (spend-weighted average), a 0.7 percentage point increase from the October estimates. In this category, spend projections far outpace pricing. 63% anticipate increasing Cloud spend by 1% or more vs. 8% anticipating a decrease in Cloud spend by 1% or worse; 33% anticipate increasing Cloud spend by 10% or more.

Repatriation of Public Cloud workloads to on-premise or private cloud infrastructure is not anticipated to be widespread over the next 12 months, with 15% of organizations intending to do so. There is an interesting disparity in Cloud repatriation between Global 2000 and Small + Midsize organizations, with the former showing 20% and the latter showing only 11% plan to move workloads out of public cloud infrastructure.

Software (on-prem, SaaS)

On average, respondents indicated Software (on-prem, SaaS) pricing has increased +3.8% in the past 6 months, as compared to 7 to 12 months ago (using the midpoint of listed ranges). This percentage is the highest rate of polled technology areas and a slight increase vs. three months ago. 66% of respondents indicated that vendors have raised pricing, with 24% citing a magnitude of 6% or greater. 17% of respondents indicated pricing has remained flat, with another 7% indicating vendors have lowered prices.

Overall Software (on-prem, SaaS) spend is anticipated to grow +4.5% in 2025 vs 2024 (spend-weighted average), a 1.1 percentage point increase from the October estimates. 54% anticipate increasing Software spend by 1% or more vs. 14% anticipating a decrease in Software spend by 1% or worse; 24% anticipate increasing Software spend by 10% or more.

On average, respondents are indicating a +3.0% mean change in software seat count over the next 6 months, as compared to the +2.3% mean change captured three months ago. 35% of respondents anticipate a 5% or greater increase vs. 10% indicating a 5% or worse decrease. Global 2000 organizations have more conservative estimates, coming in at +1.7% at the mean, though that represents a 1.0 percentage point increase from prior estimates.

Within Cloud Computing, AWS and Microsoft Azure saw the largest differences in spend, with Microsoft showing similar trends in ECM, Infrastructure, Cloud Computing, Productivity Apps, and Information Security sectors. Apple Laptop’s 61 percentage point spread between positive and negative IT spenders is the largest of this analysis, followed by VMware’s 38 point spread.