2025 Technology Trends for B2B

Top IT spending areas by tech category (2025)

Hardware: Laptops, desktops, servers, networking

Software: Operating systems, security, databases, productivity

Cloud and hosted services: Online backup and restore, IaaS, web hosting, productivity

IT labor: Senior employees and mid-level employees

Managed services: Managed security, networking, hosting, backup and recovery

Facilities and power: Utilities, Power and climate, physical security, data centers 

Telecom: ISPs, mobile charges, WAN

IT spending plans within and across tech categories

Because some tech categories are quite broad and other technology areas span categories (e.g., security spans hardware, software, cloud, and managed services), reporting spending in different ways can provide additional insights for IT departments looking to benchmark 2025 budgets and tech vendors developing marketing plans.

Expected tech spending, by % of overall 2025 IT budgets

Within tech categories

• 10% Internal employees (IT labor)
  • Junior, mid-level, and senior employees
• 9% Client devices (Hardware)
  • Laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones

Across tech categories (e.g., hardware, software, cloud, and services)

• 9% Infrastructure (compute, storage, networking)
• 6% Security solutions 
• 5% Backup and restore solutions
• 3% Communications solutions
• 3% Productivity solutions
• 3% IT management solutions
• 3% Business support solutions

Where will IT spending increase or decrease in 2025?

Our study asked respondents to share their plans to increase or decrease spending across dozens of technology areas—often across categories—including security solutions, backup and recovery solutions, generative AI software, and more.

More than half of organizations will increase AI spending

Interestingly, 54% of businesses plan to increase spending on generative AI software, making it the technology area most likely to see spending growth. Additionally, with the rapid proliferation of AI into many products and services, overall AI adoption has already expanded to 40% of businesses.

Given that security concerns are the top factor influencing budget growth, it should come as no surprise that roughly half of organizations plan to increase spending on security solutions (52%). Also, with Windows 10 end-of-service in October 2025 and laptops purchased during the pandemic-driven rush to support remote workers now more than four years old, 47% of organizations plan to increase laptop spending in 2025.

By contrast, the bottom three areas in our study, where fewer IT departments plan to increase spending, include web hosting (27%), legacy telephone (26%), and printers (21%). In fact, organizations are nearly as likely (20%) to decrease spending on printers as they are to increase.