Analyst firm Telsyte has released new research showing Australian businesses will experience a new wave of disruption in 2015.

This is as a combination of wearable technology, remote working, online services and business unit technology spending change traditional IT spending and strategies.

The researchers believe over 50% of all CIOs ‘believe line of business IT spending will exceed central IT spending within 5 years.’

Rodney Gedda, Telsyte’s senior analyst noted that business units like operations, marketing and finance have always had a say in the type of IT they use, but in today’s climate of on-demand procurement it’s easier than ever work with – or by-pass – IT to get a service they need.

Gedda added: “Today’s operations and marketing managers rely on technology to deliver business outcomes and the CIO is no longer the source of all procurement decisions.”

All of this is expanded upon in Telsyte’s 100-page ’Australian Digital Workplace Study 2015’, which Telsyte naturally hopes to sell interest parties a copy of, and which covers the key trends and strategies CIOs are employing to manage information and deal with social and technological change.

The study covers trends in business ICT spending and strategy and how IT and business leaders are preparing for the impact of emerging technologies.

Telsyte also points to Australian IT departments having to deal with more business unit IT spending, with 79% of organisations having at least one line of business – including marketing, operations and finance – with its own IT budget!

Gedda said: “This is up 5% from 2014 and shows a growing demand for IT services from areas of the business like marketing.

“Combine this with more accessible cloud-based applications and the CIO has another information management procurement channel to deal with.”

Gedda notes that ‘adding the central IT function still controls on average greater than 70% of the total spending value.’

The appetite for investment in 2015 is strong with organisations looking to increase ICT budgets by an average of 5% and more than half (57%) of CIOs expect in-house IT staff numbers to increase this year.

Areas organisations are looking to increase spending most in include cloud computing, mobility, software-as-service and cloud UC and telephony.

“While operational cost savings remains the top business priority for 2015, both revenue growth and business process improvement are a higher priority than they were in 2014,” Gedda says.

The proliferation of consumer technology, including wearable computers, will extend the reach of the bring your own device (BYOD) phenomenon and organisations will need to prepare for more unmanaged devices on their networks.

“Like smartphones before them, wearable computers like augmented reality headsets might have business applications and people will find ways to be productive with them at work.”

Telsyte’s Australian Digital Workplace Study 2015 was derived from primary research of 424 Australian CIOs and other ICT decision makers in organisations with 20 to 20,000+ employees.

The company says it provides insight on topics such as ICT budgets, value from outsourcing, line of business units spending on IT, top ICT business priorities and challenges, communications spending, changing work practices and remote/teleworking, activity based working, BYOD, BYOA (apps), social media’s benefit to business, the future of the enterprise business desktop and more.