Despite continued strong growth in Asia Pacific economies, chief information officers (CIOs) should create contingency plans to cope with escalating personnel costs and skills shortages and to prepare for the potential of global economic uncertainty in 2008, advised Gartner.

"Your IT budget for 2008 must reflect a continued focus on supporting business growth,” said Sondergaard, senior vice president and head of research, Gartner. “However it should build in cost contingencies for dealing with escalating personnel costs due to a rising skills shortage and declining quality in IT projects.”

Despite the potential for troubled global economic times ahead, preliminary figures from Gartner’s annual CIO Agenda survey indicate that optimism among CIOs around the world remains high, with 70% of CIOs expecting their company to grow faster than the market. Early indications from the survey show that IT budgets are expected to grow about 5% in 2008.  Business spending on technology is growing fastest in software, services and mobility. These three categories made up 57% of spending in 2006, will become 60% in 2008 and grow to 63% in 2011.

According to Gartner, global IT spending will reach $3.1 trillion in 2007 and spending for 2008 is forecast to grow 5.5% to reach $3.3 trillion. IT spending in the Asia Pacific region has a forecast annual growth rate of 9% in the next 3 years.

According to Gartner, the six business imperatives that IT must support include attracting and retaining customers, maximising profitability and effectiveness, improving business processes, not deleting opportunities, building innovative and agile organisations and managed risk.