Making predictions about enterprise technology is more challenging if you strive to lay down forecasts that are measurable. In other words, if you make a prediction, you should be able to look back a year later and say with some degree of certainty whether the prediction came true or not -- with evidence to back that up. In this Breaking Analysis, we aim to do just that with predictions about the macro information technology spending environment, cost optimization, security – lots to talk about there – generative AI, cloud and supercloud, blockchain adoption, data platforms (including commentary on Databricks Inc., Snowflake Inc. and other key players), automation and events, and we even have some bonus predictions. To make all this happen, we welcome back for the third year in a row, Erik Bradley, our colleague from Enterprise Technology Research. As well, you can check out how we did with our 2022 predictions. Each year, tech vendor PR pros reach out to us to help influence our predictions. It starts as early as October.

Every chief executive is figuring out the right balance for new hybrid business models. Regardless of the chosen approach, which will vary, technology executives understand they must accelerate digital and build resilience as well as optionality into their platforms. This is driving a dramatic shift in information technology investments at the macro level as we expect total spending to increase at 8% in 2021, a big turnaround from last year's contraction. Investments in cybersecurity, cloud, collaboration to enable hybrid work and data, including analytics, artificial intelligence and automation are the top spending priorities for CxOs. In this post we'll share some takeaways from ETR's latest survey and provide our commentary on what it means for markets, sellers and buyers. We'll also explain what we think Wall Street is missing about Amazon's latest earnings.

These conclusions are drawn from ETR's most recent October survey, the demographics of which are highlighted below. Bradley highlights the critical aspects of the October survey demographics. The fourth calendar quarter is often the most productive for vendors as buyers tend to spend later in the year both to lock in year-over-year budget comparisons and to get ready for the following January's project push. Having said that, it's not uncommon for ETR's October survey data to show softness relative to first-half expectations. Nonetheless, as the graphic below shows, aggregate Net Score projections for Q4 2020 are the lowest in the multi-year history of ETR's survey.