What is IT Infrastructure Priority Landscape?
Polling IT decision-makers on their infrastructure priorities reveals which technology investments, modernization initiatives, and operational improvements organizations are prioritizing. The CompTIA State of IT Report found that 56% of organizations consider cybersecurity their top infrastructure priority, followed by cloud migration at 44% and network modernization at 38%. Comparing individual priorities against aggregate peer data helps IT leaders validate their roadmap, identify blind spots, and benchmark their investment allocation against the market.
Why This Matters
Budget justification and alignment
According to the ConnectWise IT Nation Evolve Report, 67% of IT leaders report that demonstrating alignment between IT spending and business outcomes is their biggest challenge when requesting budget. Knowing how peer organizations prioritize infrastructure investments provides third-party validation that strengthens budget proposals and board-level conversations.
Cybersecurity as table stakes
The CompTIA State of IT Report shows that organizations spending less than 10% of their IT budget on security experience 3x more incidents than those at 15% or above. Yet 41% of small and mid-size businesses still allocate under 10%. Peer polling reveals whether an organization's security investment is in line with the sector or dangerously below it.
Cloud migration maturity
ConnectWise data indicates that organizations with 60% or more of workloads in the cloud report 25% lower total infrastructure costs and 40% faster deployment cycles than those below 30%. However, poorly planned migrations (lift-and-shift without optimization) often increase costs in the first year. Understanding where peers are on the migration curve helps calibrate timelines and expectations.
Common Mistakes
❌ Prioritizing new capabilities over technical debt
CompTIA reports that 47% of IT outages trace back to deferred maintenance on legacy systems. Organizations that chase new projects while ignoring aging infrastructure accumulate risk that eventually manifests as downtime, security breaches, or compliance failures. A balanced roadmap allocates 20 to 30% of budget to technical debt reduction.
❌ Treating cloud as a destination rather than a strategy
Moving everything to the cloud is not inherently cost-effective. ConnectWise data shows that 35% of organizations experienced higher-than-expected cloud costs in the first year due to over-provisioning, lack of reserved instances, and underestimating egress fees. Cloud should be a workload-by-workload decision based on performance, cost, and compliance requirements.
❌ Underinvesting in monitoring and observability
CompTIA found that organizations with mature monitoring practices detect and resolve incidents 60% faster than those relying on user-reported issues. Yet monitoring tools are frequently the first line item cut during budget tightening. Proactive observability is cheaper than reactive incident response over any 12-month period.
Industry Benchmarks
| Category | Good | Average | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small business (under 50 employees) | Managed security, cloud-first infrastructure, documented DR plan | Basic antivirus, partial cloud adoption, informal backup process | No dedicated security, on-premises only, no disaster recovery plan |
| Mid-market (50 to 500 employees) | SOC or SIEM in place, 60%+ cloud workloads, 99.9% uptime SLA | Endpoint protection, 30-60% cloud, 99.5% uptime | Reactive security, under 30% cloud, frequent unplanned downtime |
| Enterprise (500+ employees) | Zero-trust architecture, multi-cloud strategy, automated provisioning | Perimeter security, single cloud provider, semi-automated deployment | Legacy firewall-only, no cloud strategy, manual provisioning |
Source: ConnectWise IT Nation Evolve Report and CompTIA State of IT Report
Benchmark data sourced from ConnectWise IT Nation Evolve Report and CompTIA State of IT Report.