Forrester argues that cloud and AI migrations reshape IT costs rather than raise them. Global technology spending grew over five years, but spend per user stayed flat. Those per-user figures come from Information Services Group. Hosting took a larger share of budgets, while service desk and end-user costs fell by a similar amount. Forrester names three reasons budgets still rise. Running old and new environments at once is the first. Managing consumption-based costs as if they were fixed is the second. Governance that has not kept pace with the technology is the third. Forrester recommends four steps: build total cost of ownership transparency, benchmark spend against peers, mature cost optimisation practices, and set explicit decommissioning targets.
What changed
Cloud and AI migrations were often budgeted as new spending on top of existing IT costs.
What it unlocks
Testing whether a cloud or AI migration is genuinely cost-neutral before asking for more budget.
- global tech spend $4.0T to $5.2T
- spend per user flat at $15–16k
- hosting 44% to 50% of tech spend
- tech debt remediation ~30% of budget
What you need to act on it
- a total cost of ownership model such as TBM
- access to peer spend benchmarks
- a FinOps or token cost practice
Sources