Global IT debt has risen to record levels and will reach $500 billion (320 billion) this year, a Gartner study has disclosed.
Shrinking IT budgets in a cash-strapped economy has driven IT departments to cut back on maintenance projects, such as software refreshes and hardware upgrades. This contributed to Gartner's definition of IT debt, which is the cost that would be incurred to bring corporate technology investments up to date.
"Over the last decade, CIOs have frequently seen IT budgets held tight or even reduced," said Andy Kyte, vice president and Gartner fellow.
"The reaction has been to still deliver quality of service for operational services and to use any potential project spend to deliver new functionality to the rest of the business."
This has made routine upgrading a poor cousin to services expansion. Kyte said he agreed this was acceptable for one or two years but claimed for many companies it has persisted a lot longer and created a damaging backlog.
The Gartner report, Measure and Manage Your IT Debt, did not predict any improvements and, if current trends continue, estimated the debt would rise to a trillion dollars (640 billion) by 2015.
"The issue is not just that maintenance keeps on getting deferred, it is that the lack of an application inventory and the absence of a structured review process for the application portfolio," added Kyte.
"This means the IT management team is simply never aware of the true scale of the problem. This problem, hidden from sight, is getting bigger every year and more difficult to deal with every year."
He believed the growth in IT provision was a double-edged sword because it brought added functionality but the extra hardware and software required also needed to be supported and upgraded.
In his report, Kyte advised IT leaders to produce an annual report on the status of their application portfolios. To make an impression on upper management, this report should detail the current count of applications in use and the cost of maintaining and improving the integrity of these and any hardware assets.
Kyte said he did not believe this will bring immediate change and improvement but added: "Over time, the steady drip of information into the management team will start to bring about changes in attitude and develop a willingness to engage in dealing with IT debt."
