CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index Shows Gains in Q4

CompTIA’s IT Industry Business Confidence Index saw an increase of 2.2 percentage points for Q4 2015, bucking the overall decline in confidence seen in the organization’s previous two quarterly surveys.
The index currently stands at 62.8 on a 100-point scale. CompTIA polled IT executives from 335 companies in September on their opinions of the U.S. economy, the IT industry and the relative success of their own company. While each component saw an increase this quarter, confidence in the economy overall showed the largest gains.

“We’re seeing more and larger opportunities coming to the table as some businesses, who’ve historically tried to manage IT internally, realize they can accelerate their adoptions and efficiencies through outsourcing,”

Said MJ Shoer, chair of the CompTIA Board of Directors, in a statement. “We’re also seeing a strong uptick in cloud migrations.”

Additionally, 65 percent of IT executives said their companies are on track to meet their sales goals for the end of the year. When asked to clarify why, 23 percent said they’ve reached new customer segments this year, while 17 percent reported increased business from existing customers. Another 21 percent said they have improved their internal operations, allowing them to perform more efficiently and profitably, according to CompTIA.

“Though down slightly from earlier this year, a healthy percentage of companies expect to meet or exceed revenue goals for 2015, indicating the broad-based strength in the IT sector,” said Tim Herbert, senior vice president of Research and Market Intelligence at CompTIA.

When asked to benchmark the relative success of each of their product categories this year, more than three-quarters of respondents said each category is performing as expected. Specific categories mentioned in the survey include cloud applications, software as a service, mobile device sales, security, servers and data centers.

While the overall forecast going into Q4 is sunny for the IT industry, CompTIA stressed there still are concerns among executives regarding customers’ willingness or ability to invest in IT products and services. Six in 10 firms polled said they report seeing some degree of customers’ postponing certain purchases, Herbert noted. One in three companies said customers have substituted for less expensive or smaller IT purchases before a deal could be closed.

During last month’s Channel Directions Live! conference in Tampa, CompTIA’s Seth Robinson and Carolyn April announced the results of the company’s fifth “State of the Channel Study,” in which 61 percent of respondents said they were generally optimistic about their sales prospects.