The poll of more than 100 CIOs and other IT executives shows 76% plan to increase technology spending over the next 12 months, 17% are cutting investment and seven per cent keeping levels steady.

Over half of respondents expect to shift more of their overall capital expense to managed services, compared to 33% who do not and 12% that don't know.

A big spending area recently has been regulatory and compliance, with 84% increasing the money they devote to systems in the past two years; only five per cent have seen a decrease and 11% no change.

When asked what infrastructure investment areas have yielded the most return on investment in the last year, cloud computing received 45% of the responses, a third of the sample said low-latency trading and 23% complex event processing.