The year 2020 was characterized by frequent lockdowns, strict social distancing norms, and unexpected pivots in business strategy. Enterprises shifted to digitalfirst, cloud-centric, and remote work mandates to grow market share, stabilize operations, and increase customer relevance. While the pandemic reduced global IT investments by 2.2% in 2020, worldwide technology spending in 2021 will increase to $4 trillion, for overall annual growth of 8.4%. 

As we enter the post-pandemic era, which technology investments will rise to the top in 2021? IDG’s 2021 State of the CIO survey finds that IT leaders are prioritizing data and business analytics (39%), security and risk management (37%), and cloud-based enterprise applications (32%) initiatives. More importantly, 82% of technology executives believe the pandemic has driven the adoption of new technologies, IT strategies, and methodologies.