The initial Index results show that overall investments in digital resiliency have increased steadily throughout the year as businesses prioritize or accelerate adoption of cloud, collaborative, and digital transformation projects.
Security has also been a major investment area, driven by the shift to more remote work and accelerated cloud adoption in 2020.
"Digital resiliency refers to an organization's ability to rapidly adapt to business disruptions by leveraging digital capabilities to not only restore business operations, but also capitalize on the changed conditions," said Stephen Minton, vice president in IDC's Customer Insights & Analysis group.
Minton said the ability to respond quickly and effectively to unexpected changes in the business environment are critical to an organization's short-term success.
"To prepare for future business disruptions, organizations need plans that will enable them to rapidly adapt as opposed to just respond. Investments in digital capabilities not only enable an organization to adapt to the current crisis but also to capitalize on the changed conditions," he added.
The Digital Resiliency Investment Index is comprised of two factors – digital core investments and digital innovation investments.
- Digital Core Investments are comprised of spending on the core components of digital resiliency: cloud, security, collaborative support for remote workers, and digital transformation projects. This score should increase over time as organizations shift budget away from traditional and legacy IT spending and toward these core components of digital resiliency.
- Digital Innovation Investments are measured using a monthly survey of enterprises on their current and anticipated IT investment focus, including how much new or reallocated spending is targeted at digital resiliency and business acceleration versus crisis response measures. This score should also increase over time as organizations shift their spending focus back to building a digital enterprise.
Overall, investments in cloud, collaboration, and security have managed to grow throughout 2020, despite a decline in overall IT spending. In recent months, the focus on resiliency has increased as organizations realize the importance of being prepared for future business disruptions.
IDC expects digital resiliency spending to accelerate in 2021 as the global economy improves.
On a geographic basis, resiliency investments grew fastest in Asia/Pacific, in line with the region's overall response to the pandemic.
"The next several months may put increased pressure on some organizations to respond to second waves of COVID infections and economic lockdowns, which will be reflected in our monthly surveys throughout the winter," said Minton.
He added that early adopters of cloud, digital, and collaborative technologies were best-positioned for a crisis no one could have predicted.
"Digital resiliency in the coming 6-12 months will to some extent reflect the speed at which others were able to pivot their tech investments in 2020, even as overall budgets were constrained by economic uncertainty," he continued.
